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PARDNERS 


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' Any of you gentlemen got ideas on the subject ? 





PARDNERS 


By REX E. BEACH 

Author of 

‘The Barrier,” “The Spoilers’ 



ILLUSTRATED 


A. L. BURT COMP ANT 
Publishers New Tork 




Copyright, 1905, by 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

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Copyright, 1904, 1905, by The S. S. McClure Company. Copyright, 1904, 
by Frank Leslie Publishing Co. Copyright, 1905, by The Ridgeway -Thayer 
Company. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PARDNERS .... o ... 1 

The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 45 

The Colonel and the Horse-Thief . . 71 

The Thaw at Slisco’s 93 

Bitter, Root Billings, Arbiter . . .117 

The Shyness of Shorty 145 

The Test 169 

North of Fifty-Three . . . . .197 

Where Northern Lights Come Down 

O’ Nights 223 

The Scourge 247 



PARDNEKB 


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PARDNERS 


“Most all the old quotations need fixing/’ said 
Joyce in tones forbidding dispute. “For in- 
stance, the guy that alluded to marriages germ- 
inating in heaven certainly got off on the wrong 
foot. He meant pardnerships. The same works 
ain’t got capacity for both, no more’n you can 
build a split-second stop-watch in a stone 
quarry. No, sir! A true pardnership is the 
sanctified est relation that grows, is, and has its 
beans, while any two folks of opposite sect can 
marry and peg the game out some way. Of 
course, all pardnerships ain’t divine. To every 
one that’s heaven borned there’s a thousand 
made in — . There goes them cussed dogs 
again!” 

He dove abruptly at the tent flap, disap- 
pearing like a palmed coin, while our canvas 


PARDNERS 


4 

structure reeled drunkenly at his impact. The 
sounds of strife without rose shrilly into blend- 
ed agony, and the yelps of Keno melted away 
down the gulch in a rapid and rabid dim- 
inuendo. 

Inasmuch as I had just packed out from 
camp in a loose pair of rubber boots, and was 
nursing two gall blisters, I did not feel called 
upon to emulate this energy of arbitration, 
particularly in bare feet. 

“That black malamoot is a walking dele- 
gate for strife,” he remarked, returning. “ Some- 
time I’ll lose my temper — and that’s the kind 
of pardners me and Justus Morrow was.” 

Never more do I interrupt the allegory of 
my mate, no matter how startling its structure. 
He adventures orally when and in the manner 
the spirit calls, without rote, form, or tone pro- 
duction. Therefore I kicked my blistered heels 
in the air and grunted aimless encouragement. 

“I was prospectin’ a claim on Caribou 
Creek, and had her punched as full of holes as 
a sponge cake, when the necessity of a change 


Pardners 5 

appealed to me. I was out of everything more 
nourishing than h^pe and one slab of pay- 
streaked bacon, when two tenderfeet ‘mushed’ 
up the gulch, and invited themselves into my 
cabin to watch me pan. It’s the simplest thing 
known to science to salt a tenderfoot, so I 
didn’t have no trouble in selling out for three 
thousand dollars. 

“You see, they couldn’t kick, ’cause some 
of us ‘ old timers ’ was bound to get their money 
anyhow — just a question of time; and their 
inexperience was cheap at the price. Also, they 
was real nice boys, and I hated to see ’em fall 
amongst them crooks at Dawson. It was a 
short-horned triumph, though. Like the Dead 
Sea biscuits of Scripture, it turned to ashes in 
my mouth. It wasn’t three days later that they 
struck it; right in my last shaft, within a foot 
of where I quit diggin’. They rocked out fifty 
ounces first day. When the news filtered to me, 
of course, I never made no holler. I couldn’t — 
that is, honestly — but I bought a six hundred 
dollar grub stake, loaded it aboard a dory. 


6 


PARDNERS 


and — having instructed the trader regarding 
the disposition of my mortal, drunken remains, 
I fanned through that camp like a prairie fire 
shot in the sirloin with a hot wind. 

“ Of course, it wasn’t such a big spree; noth- 
ing gaudy or Swedelike; but them that should 
know, claimed it was a model of refinement. 
Yes, I have got many encomiums on its gen- 
eral proportions and artistic finish. One hun- 
dred dollars an hour for twenty-four hours, 
all in red licker, confined to and in me and 
my choicest sympathizers. I reckon all our 
booze combined would have made a fair sluice- 
head. Anyhow, I woke up considerable farther 
down the dim vistas of time and about the 
same distance down the Yukon, in the bottom 
of my dory, seekin’ new fields at six miles an 
hour. The trader had follered my last will and 
testament scrupulous, even to coverin’ up my 
legs. 

“That’s how I drifted into Rampart City, 
and Justus Morrow. 

“This here town was the same as any new 


Pardners 7 

camp; a mile long and eighteen inches wide, 
consisting of saloons, dance-halls, saloons, 
trading-posts, saloons, places to get licker, and 
saloons. Might not have been so many dance- 
'halls and trading-posts as I’ve mentioned, and 
a few more saloons. 

“I dropped into a joint called The Recep- 
tion, and who’d I see playing ‘bank’ but 
‘Single Out’ Wilmer, the worst gambler on 
the river. Mounted police had him on the 
woodpile in Dawson, then tied a can on him. 
At the same table was a nice, tender Phila- 
delphia squab, ’bout fryin’ size, and while I 
was watching, Wilmer pulls down a bet be- 
longing to it. That’s an old game. 

“‘Pardon me,’ says the broiler; ‘you have 
my checks.’ 

“‘What?’ growls ‘Single Out;’ ‘I knowed 
this game before you quit nursin’, Bright Eyes. 
I can protect my own bets.’ 

“‘That’s right,’ chimes the dealer, who I 
seen was ‘Curly’ Budd, Wilmer’s pardner. 

“ ‘ Lord ! ’ thinks I, ‘ there’s a pair to draw to/ 


8 


PAKDNERS 


“‘Do you really think you had ought to 
play this? It’s a man’s game,’ says Wilmer 
nasty. 

“I expected to see the youngster dog it. 
Nothin’ of the kind. 

“‘That’s my bet!’ he says again, and I 
noticed something dry in his voice, like the 
rustle of silk. 

“Single Out just looks black and snarls at 
the dealer. 

“‘Turn the cards!’ 

“‘Oh, very well,’ says the chechako, talk- 
ing like a little girl. 

“Somebody snickered and, thinks I ‘there’s 
sprightly doin’s hereabouts. I’ll tarry a while 
and see ’em singe the fowl. I like the smell of 
burning pin feathers; it clears my head.’ 

“ Over in the far corner was another animal 
in knee panties, riggin’ up one of these flash- 
light, snappy-shot, photograft layouts. I found 
afterwards that he done it for a living; didn’t 
work none, just strayed around as co-respond- 
ent for an English newspaper syndicate, tak- 


Pardners 9 

ing pictures and writing story things. I didn’t 
pay much attention to him hiding under his , 
black cloth, ’cause the faro-table was full of 
bets, and it’s hard to follow the play. Well, 
bye-and-bye Wilmer shifted another stack be- 
longing to the Easterner. 

“The lad never begged his pardon nor 
nothin’. His fist just shot out and landed on 
the nigh corner of Wilmer’s jaw, clean and 
fair, and ‘Single Out’ done as pretty a head- 
spin as I ever see — considering that it was 
executed in a cuspidore. ’Twas my first in- 
sight into the amenities of football. I’d like 
to see a whole game of it. They say it lasts an 
hour and a half. Of all the cordial, why-how- 
do-you-do mule kicks handed down in rhyme 
and story, that wallop was the adopted daddy. 

“ When he struck, I took the end of the bar 
like a steeplechaser, for I seen ‘Curly’ grab 
at the drawer, and I have aversions to wit- 
nessing gun plays from the front end. The 
tenderfoot riz up in his chair, and snatchin’ 
a stack of reds in his off mit, dashed ’em into 


10 


PARDNERS 


‘Curly’s’ face just as he pulled trigger. It 
spoiled his aim, and the boy was on to him 
like a mountain lion, follerin’ over the table, 
along the line of least resistance. 

“It was like takin’ a candy sucker from a 
baby. ‘Curly’ let go of that ‘six’ like he was 
plumb tired of it, and the kid welted him over 
the ear just oncet. Then he turned on the room ; 
and right there my heart went out to him. He 
took in the line up at a sweep of his lamps : 

“‘Any of you gentlemen got ideas on the 
subject?’ he says, and his eyes danced like 
waves in the sunshine. 

“It was all that finished and genteel that 
I speaks up without thinkin’, ‘You for me 
pardner ! ’ 

“Just as I said it, there come a swish and 
flash as if a kag of black powder had changed 
its state of bein’. I s’pose everybody yelled 
and dodged except the picture man. He says, 
‘Thank you, gents; very pretty tableau.’ 

“It was the first flash-light I ever see, and 
all I recall now is a panorama of starin’ eyeballs 


Pardmrs 11 

and gaping mouths. When it seen it wasn’t tor- 
pedoed, the population begin crawlin’ out from 
under chairs and tables. Men hopped out like 
toads in a rain. 

“I crossed the boy’s trail later that eve- 
ning ; found him watchin’ a dance at the Gold 
Belt. The photografter was there, too, and 
when he’d got his dog-house fixed, he says: 

“‘Everybody take pardners, and whoop 
her up. I want this picture for the Weekly . 
Get busy, you, there!’ We all joined in to help 
things; the orchestra hit the rough spots, and 
we went highfalutin’ down the centre, to show 
the English race how our joy pained us, and 
that life in the Klondyke had the Newport 
whirl, looking like society in a Siwash village. 
He got another good picture. 

“Inside of a week, Morrow and I had joined 
up. We leased a claim and had our cabin done, 
waiting for snow to fall so’s to sled our grub 
out to the creek. He took to me like I did to 
him, and he was an educated lad, too. Some* 
how, though, it hadn’t gone to his head, leav* 


12 


PARDNERS 


ing his hands useless, like knowledge usually 
does. 

“One day, just before the last boat pulled 
down river, Mr. Struthers, the picture man, 
come to us — R. Alonzo Struthers, of London 
and ’Frisco, he was — and showin’ us a pic- 
ture, he says : 

“‘Ain’t that great? Sunday supplements! 
Full page! Big display! eh ?’ 

“It sure was. ’Bout 9x9, and showing 
every detail of the Reception saloon. There 
was ‘Single Out’ analyzing the cuspidore and 
‘Curly’ dozin’, as contorted and well-done 
as a pretzel. There was the crowd hiding in the 
corners, and behind the faro-table stood the kid, 
one hand among the scattered chips and cards, 
the other dominating the layout with ‘ Curley’s’ 
‘six.’ It couldn’t have looked more natural if 
we’d posed for it. It was a bully likeness, I 
thought, too, till I seen myself glaring over the 
bar. All that showed of William P. Joyce, 
bachelor of some arts and plenty of science, 
late of Dawson, was the white of his eyes. 


Par drier s 13 

And talkin’ of white — say, I looked like I had 
washing hung out. Seemed like the draught 
had riz my hair up, too. 

“‘Nothing like it ever seen,’ continues 
Struthers. ‘ I’ll call it “The Winning Card,” 
or ‘‘At Bay,” or something like that. Feature 
it as a typical Ivlondyke card game. I’ll give 
you a two-page write-up. Why, it’s the greatest 
thing I ever did ! ’ 

“‘I’m sorry,’ says Morrow, thoughtful, 
‘but you musn’t run it.’ 

“‘What! says he, and I thinks, ‘Oh, Lord. 
Tnere goes my only show to get perpetufied in 
ink.’ 

“‘I can’t let you use it. My wife might see 
it.’ 

“‘Your wife!’ says I. ‘Are you married, 
pardner P ’ 

“‘Yes, I’m married,’ and his voice sounded 
queer. ‘ I’ve got a boy — too, see.’ 

“He took a locket from his flannel shirt and 
opened it. A curly-headed, dimpled little 
youngster laughed out at me. 


14 


PARDNERS 


“‘Well, I’m d — !’ and then I took off my 
hat, for in the other side was a woman — and, 
gentlemen, she was a woman ! When I seen her 
it made me feel blushy and ashamed. Gee! 
She was a stunner. I just stared at her till 
Struthers looked over my shoulder, and says 9 
excited : 

“‘ Why, it’s Olive Troop, the singer!’ 

“‘Not any more,’ says Morrow, smiling. 

“‘Oh! So you’re the fellow she gave up her 
art for ? I knew her on the stage.’ 

“Something way deep down in the man 
grated on me, but the kid was lookin’ at the 
picture and never noticed, while hunger peered 
from his face. 

“‘You can’t blame me,’ he says finally. 
‘ She’d worry to death if she saw that picture. 
The likeness is too good. You might substi- 
tute another face on my shoulders; that can be 
done, can’t it ?’ 

“‘Why, sure; dead easy, but I’ll not run it 
at all if you feel that way,’ says the artist. 

“Then, Morrow resumes, ‘You’ll be in 


Par (Lner s 15 

Denver this fall, Struthers, eh? Well, I want 
you to take a letter to her. She’ll be glad to see 
an old friend like you, and to hear from me. 
Tell her I’m well and happy, and that I’ll make 
a fortune, sure. Tell her, too, that there won’t 
be any mail out of here till spring.’ 

“Now, I don’t claim no second sight in the 
matter of female features: I ain’t had no 
coachin’; not even as much as the ordinary, 
being raised on a bottle, but I’ve studied the 
ornery imprints of men’s thoughts, over green 
tables and gun bar’ls, till I can about guess 
whether they’ve drawed four aces or an in- 
vite to a funeral. I got another flash from that 
man I didn’t like, though his words were 
hearty. He left, soon after, on the last boat. 

“Soon as ever the ground froze we began 
to sink. In those days steam thawers wasn’t 
dreamed of, so we slid wood down from the 
hills, and burned the ground with fires. It’s 
slow work, and we didn’t catch bed-rock till 
December, but when we did we struck it 
right. Four feet of ten-cent dirt was what she 


16 


PARDNERS 


averaged. Big? Well, I wonder! It near drove 
Morrow crazy. 

“‘ Billy, old boy, this means I’ll see her next 
summer ! ’ 

“Whenever he mentioned her name, he 
spoke like a man in church or out of breath. 
Somehow it made me feel like takin’ off my 
cap — forty below at that, and my ears freeze 
terrible willing since that winter on the Por- 
cupine. 

“That evening, when I wasn’t looking, he 
sneaked the locket out of his shirt and stared 
at it, famished. Then he kissed it, if you might 
rehabilitate such a scandalous, hold-fast-for- 
the-corner performance by that name. 

“‘I must let her know right away,’ says he. 
* How can I do it ? ’ 

“‘We can hire a messenger, and send him 
to Dawson,’ says I. ‘Everybody in camp will 
pay five dollars a letter, and he can bring back 
the outside mail. They have monthly service 
from there to the coast. He’ll make the trip in 
ninety days, so you’ll get news from home by 


Par drier s 17 

the first of March. Windy Jim will go. He’d 
leave a good job and a warm camp any time 
to hit the trail. Just hitch up the dogs, crack a 
whip, and yell ‘Mush on!’ and he’ll get the 
snow-shoe itch, and water at the mouth for 
hardship.’ 

“Not being house-broke and tame myself, 
I ain’t authority on the joys of getting mail 
from home, but, next to it, I judge, comes 
writing to your family. Anyhow, the boy shined 
up like new money, and there was from one to 
four million pages in his hurried note. I don’t 
mean to say that he was grouchy at any time. 
No, sir! He was the nickel-plated sunbeam of 
the whole creek. Why, I’ve knowed him to do 
the cooking for two weeks at a stretch, and 
never kick — and wash the dishes , too , — which 
last, as anybody knows, is crucifyin’er than 
that smelter test of the three Jews in the Scrip- 
ture. Underneath all of his sunshine, though, I 
saw hints of an awful, aching, devilish, starva- 
tion. It made me near hate the woman that 
caused it. 


18 


PARDNERS 


“ He was a wise one, too. I’ve seen him stir- 
ring dog-feed with one hand and spouting 
4 Gray’s Elegy ’ with the other. I picked up a 
heap of knowledge from him, for he had 
American history pat. One story I liked par- 
ticular was concerning the origin of placer 
mining in this country, about a Greaser, Jason 
Somebody, who got the gold fever and grub- 
staked a mob he called the Augerknots — 
carpenters, I judge, from the mess they made 
of it. They chartered a schooner and pros- 
pected along Asy Miner, wherever that is. I 
never seen any boys from there, but the 
formation was wrong, like Texas, probably, 
’cause they sort of drifted into the sheep busi- 
ness. Of course, that was a long ways back, 
before the ’49 rush, but the way he told it was 
great. 

“Well, two weeks after Windy left we work- 
ed out of that rich spot and drifted into barren 
ground. Instead of a fortune, we’d sunk onto 
the only yellow spot in the whole claim. We 
cross-cut in three places, and never raised a 


Pardners 19 

colour, but we kept gophering around till 
March, in hopes. 

“ ‘ Why did I write that letter ?’ he asked one 
day. ‘I’d give anything to stop it before it gets 
out. Think of her disappointment when she 
hears I’m broke!’ 

“‘Nobody can’t look into the ground,’ says 
I. ‘I don’t mind losin’ out myself, for I’ve 
done it for twenty years and I sort of like it 
now, but I’m sorry for the girl.’ 

“‘It means another whole season,’ he says. 
‘I wanted to see them this summer, or bring 
them in next fall.’ 

“‘Sufferin’ sluice-boxes! Are you plumb 
daffy P Bring a woman into the Yukon — and 
a little baby.’ 

“‘She’d follow me anywhere. She’s awful 
proud; proud as a Kentucky girl can be, and 
those people would make your uncle Lucifer 
look like a cringing cripple, but she’d live in an 
Indian hut with me.’ 

“‘Sure! And follerin’ out the simile, nobody 
but a Siwash would let her. If she don’t like 


20 


PARDNERS 


some other feller better while you’re gone, 
what’re you scared about ? ’ 

“He never answered; just looked at me 
pityfyin’, as much as to say, ‘Well, you poor, 
drivelin, old polyp!’ 

“One day Denny, the squaw-man, drove 
up the creek: 

“‘Windy Jim is back with the mail,’ says 
he, and we hit for camp on the run. Only 
fifteen mile, she is, but I was all in when we 
got there, keepin’ up with Justus. His eyes 
outshone the snow-glitter and he sang — all 
the time he wasn’t roasting me for being so 
slow — claimed I was active as a toad-stool. 
A man ain’t got no license to excite hisself 
unless he’s struck pay dirt — or got a divorce. 

“ ‘ Gi ’me my mail, quick ! ’ he says to Windy, 
who had tinkered up a one-night stand post- 
office and dealt out letters, at five dollars per 
let.’ 

“‘Nothing doing,’ says Windy. 

“‘Oh, yes there is,’ he replies, still smil- 
ing; ‘she writes me every week.’ 


Par drier s 21 

“‘I got all there was at Dawson/ Windy 
give back, ‘and there ain’t a thing for you!’ 

“I consider the tragedy of this north coun- 
try lies in its mail service. Uncle Sam insti- 
tutes rural deliveries, so the bolomen can 
register poisoned arrowheads to the Igorrotes 
in exchange for recipes to make roulade of 
naval officer, but his American miners in 
Alaska go shy on home news for eight months 
every year. 

“That was the last mail we had till June. 

“When the river broke we cleaned up one 
hundred and eighty-seven dollars’ worth of 
lovely, yellow dust, and seven hundred and 
thirty-five dollars in beautiful yellow bills from 
the post. 

“ The first boat down from Dawson brought 
mail, and I stood beside him when he got his. 
He shook so he held on to the purser’s window. 
Instead of a stack of squares overrun with fe- 
male chiropody, there was only one for him — 
a long, hungry sport, with indications of a law 
firm in the northwest corner. It charmed him 


22 


PARDNERS 


like a rattler. He seemed scared to open it. Two 
or three times he tried and stopped. 

“ fi They’re dead,’ thinks I; and, sure enough, 
when he’d looked, I knew it was so, and felt 
for his hand. Sympathy don’t travel by word 
of mouth between pardners. It’s the grip of the 
hand or the look of the eye. 

“ ‘ What cause ?’ says I. 

“ He turned, and s’help me, I never want to 
see the like again. His face was plumb grey and 
dead, like wet ashes, while his eyes scorched 
through, all dry and hot. Lines was sinkin’ 
into it as I looked. 

“‘It’s worse,’ says he, ‘unless it’s a joke.’ 
He handed me the dope: ‘In re Olive Troop 
Morrow vs. Justus Morrow,’ and a letter stat- 
ing that out of regard for her feelings, and 
bein’ a gentleman, he wasn’t expected to 
cause a scandal, but to let her get the divorce 
by default. No explanation; no word from her; 
nothing. 

“God knows what that boy suffered the 
next few weeks, but he fought it out alone. 


Pardners 23 

She was proud, but he was prouder. Her si- 
lence hurt him the worst, of course ; but what 
could he do ? Go to her ? Fine ! Both of us broke 
and in debt. Also, there’s such a thing as dig- 
gin ’ deep enough to scrape the varnish off of a 
man’s self-respect, leavin’ it raw and shrink- 
ing. No ! He done like you or me — let her have 
her way. He took off the locket and hid it, 
and I never heard her name mentioned for a 
year. 

“ I’d been up creek for a whip-saw one day, 
and as I came back I heard voices in the cabin. 
‘Some musher out from town,’ thinks I, till 
something in their tones made me stop in my 
tracks. 

“I could hear the boy’s voice, hoarse and 
throbbing, as though he dragged words out 
bleeding, then I heard the other one laugh — * 
a nasty, sneering laugh that ended in a chok- 
ing rattle, like a noose had tightened on his 
throat. 

“I jumped for the door, and rounding the 
corner, something near took me off my feet; 


24 


PARDNERS 


something that shot through the air, all pretty 
and knickerbockery, with a two-faced cap, 
and nice brown leggin’s. Also, a little camera 
was harnessed to it by tugs. It arose, displaying 
the face of R. Alonzo Struthers, black and 
swollen, with chips stickin’ in it where he’d 
hit the woodpile. He glared at Morrow, and his 
lips foamed like a crab out of water. 

44 4 1 hope I’m not intrudin’, I ventures. 

“When the kid seen me, he says, soft and 
weak, like something ailed his palate : 

44 4 Don’t let me kill him, Billy.’ 

44 Struthers spit, and picked splinters forth 
from his complexion. 

44 4 1 told you for your own good. It’s com- 
mon gossip,’ says he. ‘Everybody is laughing 
at you, an — 5 

“Then I done a leap for life for the kid, 
’cause the murder light blazed up white in his 
face, and he moved at the man like he had 
something serious in view. 

“‘Run, you idiot!’ I yells to Struthers as 
I jammed the youngster back into the cabin 


Pardners 25 

All of a sudden the gas went out of him and 
he broke, hanging to me like a baby. 

'“It can’t be,’ he whispers. ‘It can’t be.’ 
He throwed hisself on to a goods’ box, and 
buried his face in his hands. It gripes me 
to hear a man cry, so I went to the creek for a 
pail of water. 

“I never heard what Struthers said, bul 
it don’t take no Nick Carter to guess. 

“ That was the fall of the Fryin’ Pan strike 
— do you mind it ? Shakespeare George put 
us on, so me and the kid got in ahead of the 
stampede. We located one and two above dis- 
covery, and by Christmas we had a streak 
uncovered that was all gold. She was coarse, 
and we averaged six ounces a day in pick-ups. 
Man, that was ground ! I’ve flashed my candle 
along the drift face, where it looked like gold 
had been shot in with a scatter-gun. 

“We was cleaned up and had our ‘pokes’ 
at the post when the first boat from Dawson 
smoked ’round the bend. 

“Now, in them days, a man’s averdupoise 


26 


PARDNERS 


was his abstract of title. There was nothing 
said about records and patentees as long as 
you worked your ground; but, likewise, when 
you didn’t work it, somebody else usually did. 
We had a thousand feet of as good dirt as ever 
laid out in the rain ; but there was men around 
drulin’ to snipe it, and I knowed it was risky to 
leave. However, I saw what was gnawin’ at 
the boy, and if ever a man needed a friend and 
criminal lawyer, that was the time. According 
to the zodiac, certain persons, to the complain- 
ant unknown, had a mess of trouble cornin’ up 
and I wanted to have the bail money handy. 

“We jumped camp together. I made oration 
to the general gnat-bitten populace, from the 
gang-plank, to the effect that one William P. 
Joyce, trap, crap, and snap shooter was due 
to happen back casual most any time, and any 
lady or gent desirous of witnessing at first 
hand, a shutzenfest with live targets, could be 
gratified by infestin’ in person or by proxy, 
the lands, tenements, and hereditaments of me 
and the kid. 



“ Don't let me kill him , Billy." 



















































* 





































































































r 



































Pardners %7 

“Well, we hit the Seattle docks at a canter,, 
him headed for the postal telegraph, me for 
a fruit-stand. I bought a dollar’s worth of 
everything, from cracker- jack to cantaloupe, 
reserving the local option of eatin’ it there in 
whole or in part, and returning for more. 
First fresh fruit in three years. I reckon my 
proudest hour come when I found, beyond 
peradventure, that I hadn’t forgot the ‘ Georgy 
Grind.’ What? ‘Georgy Grind’ consists of 
feeding rough-hewed slabs of watermelon into 
your sou’ sou’east corner, and squirting a 
stream of seeds out from the other cardinal 
points, without stopping or strangling. 

“I et and et, and then wallered up to the 
hotel, sweatin’ a different kind of fruit juice 
from every pore. Not wishing to play any 
favourites, I’d picked up a basket of tomatoes, 
a gunny-sack of pineapples, and a peck of 
green plums on the way. Them plums done 
the business. I’d orter let bad enough alone. 
They was non-union, and I begin having 
trouble with my inside help. Morrow turned 


28 


PARDNERS 


in a hurry-up call for the Red Cross, two medi 
cal colleges, and the Society of Psycolic Re- 
search. Between ’em they diagnosed me as con- 
taining everything from ‘housemaid’s knee’ to 
homesickness of the vital organs, but I know . 
I swallered a plum pit, and it sprouted. 

“Next day, when I come out of it, Justus 
had heard from Denver. His wife had been 
gone a year, destination unknown. Somebody 
thought she went to California, so, two days 
later, we registered at the Palace, and the 
’Frisco police begin dreaming of five thousand 
dollar rewards. 

“It was no use, though. One day I met 
Struthers on Market Street, and he was scared 
stiff to hear that Morrow was in town. It seems 
he was night editor of one of the big dailies. 

“‘Do you know where the girl is ?’ says I. 

‘“Yes, she’s in New York,’ he answers, 
looking queer, so I hurried back to the hotel. 

“As I was explaining to Morrow, a woman 
passed us in the hall with a little boy. In the 
dimness, the lad mistook Justus. 


Pardners 29 

“‘Oh, papa, papa!’ he yells, and grabs him 
by the knees, laughing and kicking. 

“ ‘Ah-h ! ’ my pardner sighs, hoarse as a raven, 
and quicker’n light he snatched the little shaver 
to him, then seeing his mistake, dropped him 
rough. His face went grey again, and he got 
wabbly at the hinges, so I helped him into the 
parlour. He had that hungry, Yukon look, and 
breathed like he was wounded. 

“‘You come with me,’ says I, ‘and get your 
mind off of things. The eastern limited don’t 
leave till midnight. Us to the theatre!’ 

“It was a swell tepee, all right. Variety 
house, with moving pictures, and actorbats, 
and two-ton soubrettes, with Barrios diamonds 
and hand-painted socks. 

“First good show I’d seen in three years, 
and naturally humour broke out all over me. 
When joy spreads its wings in my vitals, I 
sound like a boy with a stick running past a 
picket-fence. Not so Morrow. He slopped over 
the sides of his seat, like he’d been spilled 
into the house. 


30 


PARDNERS 


“Right after the sea-lions, the orchestra 
spieled some teetery music, and out floats a 
woman, slim and graceful as an antelope. She 
had a big pay-dump of brown hair, piled up 
on her hurricane deck, with eyes that snapped 
and crinkled at the corners. She single-footed 
in like a derby colt, and the somnambulists in 
the front row begin to show cause. Something 
about her startled me, so I nudged the kid, but 
he was chin-deep in the plush, with his eyes 
closed. I marked how dr awed and haggard he 
looked ; and then, of a sudden he raised half on 
to his feet. The girl had begun to sing. Her 
voice was rich and low, and full of deep, still 
places, like a mountain stream. But Morrow! 
He sunk his fingers into me, and leaned for’rad, 
starin’ as though Paradise had opened for him, 
while the sweat on his face shone like diamond 
chips. 

“It was the girl of the locket, all right, on 
the stage again — in vaudeville. 

“Her song bubbled along, rippling over 
sandy, sunlit gravel bars, and slidin’ out 


Par drier s 31 

through shadowy trout pools beneath the 
cool, alder thickets, and all the time my pard- 
ner sat burning his soul in his eyes, his breath 
achin’ out through his throat. Incidental, his 
digits was knuckle-deep into the muscular 
tissue of William P., the gent to the right. 

“ When she quit, I had to jam him back. 

“For an encore she sang a reg’lar Amerb 
can song, with music to it. When she reached 
the chorus she stopped. Then away up in 
the balcony sounded the tiny treble of a 
uoy's soprano, sweet as the ring of silver. 
The audience turned, to a man, and we 
seen, perched among the newsboys, the lit- 
tlest, golden-haired youngster, ’bout the size 
of your thumb, his eyes glued to the face of 
his mother on the stage below, pourin’ out his 
lark song, serious and frightened. Twice he 
done it, while by main stren’th I held his 
father to the enjoyments of a two-dollar or- 
chestra chair. 

“‘Let us in,’ we says, three m mutes later, 
to the stranger at the stage door, but he looked 


PARDNERS 


m 

upon us with unwelcome, like the seven* 
headed hydrant of Holy Writ. 

“‘It’s agin’ the rules,’ says he. ‘You kin 
wait in the alley with the other Johnnies.’ 

“I ain’t acclimated to the cold disfavour of a 
stage door, never having soubretted along the 
bird and bottle route. I was for the layin’ on 
of hands. Moreover, I didn’t like the company 
we was in, ‘Johnnies,’ by designations of the 
Irish terrier at the wicket. They smoked ready- 
made cigarettes, and some of ’em must have 
measured full eight inches acrost the chest. 

“‘Let us stroll gently but firmly into, over, 
and past the remains of this party, to the mis- 
sus,’ says I, but Morrow got seized with the 
shakes,, of a sudden. 

“‘No, no. We’ll wait here.* 

“At last she come out, steppin’ high. When 
she moved she rustled and rattled like she 
wore sandpaper at the ankles. 

“Say, she was royal! She carried the young- 
ster in her arms, sound asleep, and it wasn’t till 
she stepped under the gaslight that she seen us. 


Pardners 33 

Oh!* she cried, and went white as the lace 
of her cloak. Then she hugged the kiddie dost 
to her, standing straight and queenly, her eyes 
ablaze, her lips moist, and red, and scornful. 

“ God, she was grand — but him ? He looked 
like a barnacle. 

* ct Olive!’ says he, bull-froggy, and that’s 
all. Just quit like a dog and ate her up by long- 
distance eyesight. Lord! Nobody would have 
knowed him for the same man that called the 
crookedest gamblers on the Yukon, and bolted 
newspaper men raw. He had ingrowing lan- 
guage. It oozed out through his pores till he 
dreened. like a harvest hand. I’d have had her 
in my arms in two winks, so that all hell and a 
policeman couldn’t have busted my holt till 
she’d said she loved me. 

“ She shrivelled him with a look, the likes of 
which aint strayed over the Mason-Dixon line 
since Lee surrendered, and swept by us, in- 
vitin’ an’ horspitable as an iceberg in a cross 
sea. Her cab door slammed, and I yanked 
Morrow out of there, more dead than alive. 


34 


PARDNERS 


“‘Let me go home,’ says he wearily. 

“‘You bet!’ I snorts. ‘It’s time you was 
tucked in. The dew is failin’ and some rude 
person might accost you. You big slob! There’s 
a man’s work to do to-night, and as I don’t 
seem to have no competition in holding the 
title, I s’pose it’s my lead.’ I throwed him into 
a carriage. ‘You’d best put on your nighty, 
and have the maid turn down your light. 
Sweet dreams, Gussie!’ I was plumb sore on 
him. History don’t record no divorce suits 
in the Stone Age, when a domestic inclined 
man alius toted a white-oak billy, studded 
with wire nails, according to the pictures, 
and didn’t scruple to use it, both at home 
and abroad. Women was hairy, them days, 
and harder to make love, honour and obey; 
but principles is undyin’. 

“I boarded another cab: 

“‘Drive me to number — / giving him 
the address I’d heard her use. 

“‘Who is it,’ came her voice when I rang 
the bell. 


N 


Pardners 35 

“‘Messenger boy/ I replies, perjuring my 
vocal cords. 

“When she opened the door, I pushed 
through and closed it behind me. 

“‘What does this mean ?’ she cried. ‘Help!’ 
“‘Shut up! It means you’re killing the best 
boy in the world, and I want to know why/ 
“‘Who are you?’ 

“‘I’m Bill Joyce, your husband’s pardner. 
Old Tarantula Bill, that don’t fear no man, 
woman, or child that roams the forest. I’m 
here to find what ails you — ’ 

“‘Leave this house, sir!’ 

‘“Well, not to any extent. You’re a good 
girl; I knowed it when I first seen your pic- 
ture. Now, I want you to tell me — ’ 

“Insolent! Shall I call the police?’ Her 
voice was icy, and she stood as solid as stone. 

“ ‘ Madam, I’m as gentle as a jellyfish, and 
peaceful to a fault, but if you raise a row be- 
fore I finish my talk I’ll claim no responsi- 
bility over what occurs to the first eight or 
ten people that intrudes/ and I drawed my 


36 


PARDNERS 


skinnin’ knife, layin’ it on the pianner. 6 Phil- 
anthropy is raging through my innards, and 
two loving hearts need joining!’ 

“ ‘ I don’t love him,’ she quotes, like a phono- 
graft, ignoring my cutlery. 

“‘I’ll take exception to that ruling,’ and I 
picks up a picture of Justus she’d dropped as 
I broke in. She never batted an eye. 

“‘I nursed that lad through brain fever, 
when all he could utter was your name.’ 

“‘Has he been sick?’ The first sign of 
spring lit up her peaks. 

“‘Most dead. Notice of the divorce done it. 
He’s in bad shape yet.’ Morrow never had a 
sick day in his life, but I stomped both feet on 
the soft pedal, and pulled out the tremulo stop. 

“ ‘ Oh ! Oh ! ’ Her voice was soft, though she 
still stood like a birch. 

“ ‘ Little girl,’ I laid a hand on her shoulder. 
‘We both love that boy. Come, now, what is 
the matter ? ’ 

“ She flashed up like powder. 

“‘Matter? I thought he was a gentleman, 


Pardners 37 

even though he didn’t love me; that he had a 
shred of honour, at least. But no! He went to 
Alaska and made a fortune. Then he squan- 
dered it, drinking, fighting, gambling, and 
frittering it away on women. Bah! Lewd crea- 
tures of the dance-halls, too.’ 

“‘Hold up! Your dope sheet is way to the 
bad. There’s something wrong with your 
libretto. Who told you all that ?’ 

“‘Never mind. I have proof. Look at these, 
and you dare to ask me why I left him ?’ 

“ She dragged out some pictures and throw ed 
’em at me. 

“‘Ah! Why didn’t I let the kid kill him?’ 
says I, through my teeth. 

“The first was the gambling-room of the 
Reception. There stood Morrow with the men 
under foot; there was the bottles and glasses; 
the chips and cards, and also the distressful 
spectacle of Tarantula Bill Joyce, a number 
twelve man, all gleaming teeth, and rolling 
eyeballs, inserting hisself into a number nine 
opening, and doing surprising well at it. 


38 


PARDNERS 


“‘Look at them. Look at them well,’ she 
gibed. 

“The second was the Gold-Belt dance-hall, 
with the kid cavorting through a drunken 
orgy of painted ladies, like a bull in a pansy 
patch. But the other — it took my breath 
away till I felt I was on smooth ice, with 
cracks showing. It was the inside of a cabin, 
after a big ‘pot-latch,’ displaying a table 
littered up with fizz bottles and dishes galore. 
Diamond Tooth Lou stood on a chair, wav- 
ing kisses and spilling booze from a mug. In 
the centre stood Morrow with another girl, 
nestling agin his boosum most horrible lovin’. 
Gee ! It was a home splitter and it left me spar- 
ring for wind. The whole thing exhaled an air 
of debauchery that would make a wooden In- 
dian blush. No one thing in particular; just the 
general local colour of a thousand -dollar 
bender. 

Charming, isn’t it ?’ she sneered. 

“‘I don’t savvy the burro. There’s some- 
thing phony about it. I can explain the other 


Pardners 39 

two, but this one — Then it come to me in a 
flash. The man’s face was perfect, but he wore 
knickerbockers! Now, to my personal know- 
ledge, the only being that ever invaded Ram- 
part City in them things was R. Alonzo 
Struthers. 

“‘There’s secrets of the dark-room that I 
ain’t wise to,’ says I, ‘ but I feel that this is go- 
ing to be a bad night for the newspaper en- 
terprise of ’Frisco if it don’t explain. I’ll fetch 
the man that busted your Larrys and Peanuts.’ 

“ ‘ Our what ? ’ says she. 

“ ‘ Larrys and Peanuts — that’s Roman. 
The kid told me all about ’em. They’re sort of 
little cheap gods ! ’ 

“‘Will you ever go?’ she snapped. ‘I don’t 
need your help. Tell him I hate him!’ She 
stamped her foot, and the iron come into her 
again till the pride of all Kentucky blazed 
in her eyes. 

“She couldn’t understand my explanations 
no more than I could, so I ducked. As I backed 
out the door, though, I seen her crumple up 


40 


PARDNERS 


and settle all erf a heap on the floor. She cer 
tainly did hate that man scandalous. 

“I’m glad some editors work nights. Struth- 
ers wasn’t overjoyed at my call, particular, as < 
I strayed in with two janitors dangling from 
me. They said he was busy and couldn’t be 
interrupted, and they seemed to insist on it.’ 

“‘It’s a bully night,’ says I, by way of 
epigram, unhooking the pair of bouncers. 
“ 4 You wouldn’t like me to take you ridin’ per- 
haps ?’ 

“‘Are you drunk, or crazy ?’ says he. ‘What 
do you mean by breaking into my office? I 
can’t talk to you; we’re just going to press.’ 

“‘I’d like to stay and watch it,’ says I, ‘but 
I’ve got a news item for you.’ At the same 
time I draws my skinner and lays it on the 
back of his neck, tempting. Steel, in the 
lamp-light, is discouraging to some tempera- 
ments. One of the body-guards was took with 
urgent business, and left a streamer of fun- 
ny noises behind him, while the other gave 
autumn-leaf imitations in the corner. Stru- 


Par drier s 41 

thers looked like a dose of seasickness on a 
sour stomach. 

“Get your hat. Quick!’ I jobbed him, gen- 
tle and encouraging. 

“Age alius commands respect. Therefore 
the sight of a six-foot, grizzled Klondiker in 
a wide hat, benevolently prodding the night 
editor in the short ribs and apple sauce, with 
eight bright and chilly inches, engendered a 
certain respect in the reportorial staff. 

“‘You’re going to tell Mrs. Morrow all 
about the pretty pictures,’ I says, like a father. 

“‘Let me go, damn you!’ he frothed, but 
I wedged him into a corner of the cab and 
took off his collar — in strips. It interfered 
with his breathing, as I couldn’t get a holt 
low enough to regulate his respiration. He 
kicked out two cab windows, but I bumped 
his head agin the woodwork, by way of re- 
partee. It was a real pleasure, not to say rec- 
reation, experimenting with the noises he 
made. Seldom I get a neck I give a cuss to 
squeeze. His was number fifteen at first, by 


42 


PARDNERS 


the feel; but I reduced it a quarter size at 
a time. 

“When we got there I helped him out, one 
hand under his chin, the other back of his 
ears. I done it as much from regard of the 
neighbours as animosities to him, for it was 
the still, medium small hours. I tiptoed in with 
my treatise on the infamies of photography 
gurgling under my hand, but at the door I 
stopped. It was ajar; and there, under the 
light, I spied Morrow. In his arms I got 
glimpses of black lace and wavy, brown hair, 
and a white cheek that he was accomplishing 
wonders with. They wouldn’t have heard a 
man-hole explosion. 

“‘He’s still fitting to be my pardner,’ I 
thinks, and then I heard Struthers’s teeth 
chatter and grind. I looked at him, and the 
secret of the whole play came to me. 

“Never having known the divine passion, 
it ain’t for me to judge, but I tightened on his 
voice-box and whispered: 

“‘You’ve outlived your period of usefulness* 


Pardners 43 

Struthers, and it’s time to go. Let us part 
friends, however.’ So I bade him Godspeed 
from the top step. 

“Looking back on the evening now, that 
adieu was my only mistake. I limped for a 
week — he had a bottle in his hip pocket.” 



* 



► 


v 









































THE MULE DRIVER AND THE 
GARRULOUS MUTE 


I 


* 





THE MULE DRIVER AND THE 
GARRULOUS MUTE 

Bill had finished panning the concentrates 
from our last clean-up, and now the silver ball 
of amalgam sizzled and fried on the shovel 
over the little chip-fire, while we smoked in the 
sun before the cabin. Removed from the sali- 
vating fumes of the quicksilver, we watched 
the yellow tint grow and brighten in the heat. 

“There’s two diseases which the doctors 
ain’t got any license to monkey with,” began 
Bill, chewing out blue smoke from his lungs 
with each word, “ and they’re both fevers. After 
they butt into your system they stick cross- 
ways, like a swallered toothpick; there ain’t 
any patent medicine that can bust their holt.” 

I settled against the door- jamb and nodded. 

“ I’ve had them both, acute and continuous. 


PARDNERS 


48 

since I was old enough to know my own mind 
and the taste of tobacco; I hold them mainly 
responsible for my present condition.” He 
mournfully viewed his fever-ridden frame 
which sprawled a pitiful six-feet- two from the 
heels of his gum-boots to the grizzled hair be- 
neath his white Stetson. 

“The first and most rabid,” he continued, 
“is horse-racing — and t’other is the mining 
fever, which last is a heap insidiouser in its 
action and more lingering in its effect. 

“It wasn’t long after that deal in the Terri- 
tory that I felt the symptoms coming on agin, 
and this time they pinted most emphatic to- 
ward prospecting, so me and ‘Kink’ Martin 
loaded our kit onto the burros and hit West. 

“‘Kink’ was a terrible good prospector, 
though all-fired unlucky and peculiar. Most 
people called him crazy, ’cause he had fits of 
goin’ for days without a peep. 

“Hosstyle and ornery to the whole world; 
sort of bulging out and exploding with silence, 
as it were. 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 49 
“We’d been out in the hills for a week on 
our first trip before he got one of them death- 
watch faces on him, and boycotted the English 
langwidge. I stood for it three days, trying to 
jolly a grin on to him or rattle a word loose, 
but he just wouldn’t jolt. 

“One night we packed into camp tired, 
hungry, and dying for a good feed. 

“I hustled around and produced a supper 
fit for old Mr. Eppycure. Knowing that 
‘Kink’ had a weakness for strong coffee that 
was simply a hinge in him, I pounded up about 
a quart of coffee beans in the corner of a blanket 
and boiled out a South American liquid that 
was nothing but the real Arbuckle mud. 

“This wasn’t no chafing-dish party either, 
because the wood was wet and the smoke 
chased me round the fire. Then it blazed up in 
spurts and fired the bacon-grease, so that 
when I grabbed the skillet the handle sizzled 
the life all out of my callouses. I kicked the 
fire down to a nice bed of coals and then the 
coffee-pot upset and put it out. Ashes got into 


50 


PARDNERS 


the bacon, and — Oh! you know how joyful 
it is to cook on a green fire when you’re dead 
tired and your hoodoo’s on vicious. 

“When the ‘scoffings’ were finally ready, I 
wasn’t in what you might exactly call a molly- 
fying and tactful mood nor exuding genialness 
and enthusiasms anyways noticeable.” 

“I herded the best in camp towards him, 
watching for a benevolent symptom, but he 
just dogged it in silence and never changed a 
hair. That was the limit, so I inquired sort of 
ominous and gentle, ‘Is that coffee strong 
enough for ye, Mr. Martin ? ’ 

“He give a little impecunious grunt, im- 
plying, ‘Oh! it’ll do,’ and with that I seen 
little green specks begin to buck and wing in 
front of my eyes; reaching back of me, I 
grabbed the Winchester and throwed it down 
on him. 

“‘Now, you laugh, darn you,’ I says, ‘in a 
hurry. Just turn it out gleeful and infractious.’ 

“He stared into the nozzle of that Krupp 
for a minute, then swallered twice to tune 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 51 
up his reeds, and says, friendly and perlite, but 
serious and wheezy: 

Why, what in hell ails you, William ?’ 

Laugh, you old dong-beater,’ I yells, ris- 
ing gradually to the occasion, 4 or I’ll bust your 
cupola like a blue-rock.’ 

44 4 I’ve got to have merriment,’ I says 4 1 pine 
for warmth and genial smiles, and you’re due 
to furnish the sunshine. You emit a few shreds 
of mirth with expedition or the upper end of 
your spinal-cord is going to catch cold.’ 

“Say! his jaws squeaked like a screen door 
when he loosened, but he belched up a beauty, 
sort of stagy and artificial it was, but a great 
help. After that we got to know each other a 
heap better. Yes, sir; soon after that we got real 
intimate. He knocked the gun out of my hands, 
and we began to arbitrate. We plumb ruined 
that spot for a camping place; rooted it up in 
furrows, and tramped each other’s stummicks 
out of shape. We finally reached an amicable 
settlement by me getting him agin a log where 
I could brand him with the coffee-pot. 


52 


PARDNERS 


“Right there we drawed up a protoplasm, 
by the terms of which he was to laugh any- 
ways twice at meal-times. 

“ He told me that he reckoned he was locoed, 
and always had been since a youngster, when 
the Injuns run in on them down at Frisbee, 
the time of the big ‘killing/ ‘Kink’ saw his 
mother and father both murdered, and other 
things, too, which was impressive, but not 
agreeable for a growing child. He had formed 
a sort of antipathy for Injuns at that time, 
which he confessed he hadn’t rightly been able 
to overcome. 

“Now, he alius found himself planning how 
to hand Mr. Lo the double cross and avoid 
complications. 

“ We worked down into South Western 
Arizony to a spot about thirty-five miles back 
of Fort Walker and struck a prospect. Sort 
of a teaser it was, but worth working on. We’d 
just got nicely started when ‘Kink’ comes into 
camp one day after taking a passiar around 
the butte for game, and says : 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 53 

“‘The queerest thing happened to me just 
now, Kid. 5 

“‘Well, scream it at me/ I says, sort of 
smelling trouble in the air. 

“‘Oh! It wasn’t much,’ says he. T was just 
working down the big canyon over there after 
a deer when I seen two feather-dusters coming 
up the trail. I hid behind a rock, watching ’em 
go past, and I’m dumed if my gun didn’t go off 
accidental and plumb ruin one of ’em. Then I 
looks carefuller and seen it wasn’t no feather- 
duster at all — nothing but an Injun.’ 

“‘What about the other one?’ 

“‘That’s the strangest part,’ says ‘Kink.’ 
‘Pretty soon the other one turns and hits the 
back-trail like he’d forgot something; then I 
seen him drop off his horse, too, sudden and all 
togetherish. I’m awful careless with this here 
gun,’ he says. I hate to see a man laugh from 
his tonsils forrard, the way he did. It ain’t 
humorous. 

“‘See here,’ I says, ‘I ain’t the kind that 
finds fault with my pardner, nor saying this to 


54 


PARDNERS 


be captious and critical of your play; but don’t 
you know them Cochises ain’t on the war- 
path ? Them Injuns has been on their reserva- 
tion for five years, peaceable, domesticated, 
and eating from the hand. This means trouble.’ 

“ 4 My old man didn’t have no war paint on 
him one day back at Frisbee,’ whispers ‘Kink.’ 
and his voice sounded puckered up and dried ? 
‘and my mother wasn’t so darned quarrel- 
some, either.’ 

“Then I says, ‘Well! them bodies has got to 
be hid, or we’ll have the tribe and the blue- 
bellies from the fort a scouring these hills till 
a red-bug couldn’t hide.’ 

“‘To hell with ’em,’ says ‘Kink.’ ‘I’ve done 
all I’m going to for ’em. Let the coyotes finish 
the job.’ 

“‘No, siree,’ I replies. ‘I don’t blame you 
for having a prejudice agin savages, but my 
parents is still robust and husky, and I have 
an idea that they’d rather see me back on the 
ranch than glaring through the bars for life* 
I’m going over to bury the meat.’ 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 55 

“ Off I went, but when I slid down the gulch, 
I only found one body. T’other had disap- 
peared. You can guess how much time I lost 
getting back to camp. 

‘““Kink,”’ I says, ‘we’re a straddle of the 
raggedest proposition in this country. One of 
your dusters at this moment is jamming his 
cayuse through the horizon between here and 
the post. Pretty soon things is going to bust 
loose. ’Bout to-morrer evening we’ll be eating 
hog-bosom on Uncle Sam.’ 

“‘Well! Well!’ says ‘Kink,’ ‘ain’t that a 
pity. Next time I’ll conquer my natural shyness 
and hold a post-mortem with a rock.’ 

“‘There won’t be no next time, I reckon,’ 
I says, ‘ ’cause we can’t make it over into Mexi- 
co without being caught up. They’ll nail us 
sure, seeing as we’re the only white men for 
twenty-five miles around.’ 

“ ‘ I’d rather put up a good run than a bad 
stand, anyhow,’ says he, ‘ and I allows, further- 
more, there’s going to be some hard trails to 
foller and a tolable disagreeable fight before I 


56 


PARDNERS 


pleads “not guilty” to the Colonel. We’ll both 
duck over into the Santa — ’ 

“‘Now, don’t tell me what route you’re go- 
ing,’ I interrupts, ‘ ’cause I believe I’ll stay and 
bluff it through, rather than sneak for it, though 
neither proposition don’t appeal to me. I may 
get raised out before the draw, but the percent- 
age is just as strong agin your game as mine.’ 

“‘Boy, if I was backing your system,’ says 
‘Kink,’ I’d shore copper this move and play 
her to lose. You come on with me, and we’ll 
make it through — mebbe.’ 

“‘No,’ I says; ‘here I sticks.’ 

“I made up a pack-strap out of my extry 
overhalls while he got grub together, to start 
south through one hundred miles of the rug- 
gedest and barrenest country that was ever 
left unfinished. 

“Next noon I was parching some coffee- 
beans in the frying-pan, when I heard hoofs 
down the gully back of me. I never looked up 
when they come into the open nor when I 
heard a feller say ‘ Halt! ’ 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 57 

“‘Hello there!’ somebody yells. ‘You there 
at the fire.’ I kept on shaking the skillet over 
the camp-fire. 

“‘What’s the matter with him?’ somebody 
said. A man got off and walked up behind me. 

See here, brother,’ he says, tapping me on 
the shoulder; ‘this don’t go.’ 

“I jumped clean over the fire, dropped the 
pan, and let out a deaf and dumb holler, ‘ Ee ! 
Ah!’ 

“The men began to laugh; it seemed to rile 
the little leftenant. 

“ ‘ Cut this out,’ says he. ‘ You can talk as well 
as I can, and you’re a going to tell us about this 
Injun killin’. Don’t try any fake business, or I’ll 
roast your little heels over that fire like yams.’ 

“I just acted the dummy, wiggled my fin- 
gers, and handed him the joyful gaze, helio- 
graphing with my teeth as though I was glad 
to see visitors. However, I wondered if that 
runt would really give my chilblains a treat. 
He looked like a West Pointer, and I didn’t 
know but he’d try to haze me. 


58 


PARDNERS 


“Well! they ‘klow-towed’ around there for 
an hour looking for clues, but I’d hid all the 
signs of ‘Kink,’ so finally they strapped me 
onto a horse and we hit back for the fort. 

“The lit'de man tried all kinds of tricks to 
make me loosen on the way down, but I just 
acted wounded innocence and ‘Ee’d’ and 
‘ Ah’d’ at him till he let me alone. 

“ When we rode up to the post he says to the 
Colonel : 

‘“We’ve got the only man there is in the 
mountains back there, sir, but he’s playing 
dumb. I don’t know what his game is.’ 

“‘Dumb, eh?’ says the old man, looking 
me over pretty keen. ‘Well! I guess we’ll find 
his voice if he’s got one.’ 

“He took me inside, and speaking of ex- 
aminations, probably I didn’t get one. He kept 
looking at me like he wanted to place me, but 
I give him the ‘Ee! Ah!’ till everybody began 
to laugh. They tried me with a pencil and 
paper, but I balked, laid my ears back, and 
buck-jumped. That made the old man sore. 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 59 
and he says: ‘Lock him up! Lock him up; I’ll 
make him talk if I have to skin him.’ So I was 
dragged to the ‘skookum-house,’ where 1 
spent the night figuring out my finish. 

“I could feel it coming just as plain, and I 
begun to see that when I did open up and prat- 
tle after ‘Kink’ was safe, nobody wouldn’t be- 
lieve my little story. I had sized the Colonel up 
as a dead stringy old proposition, too. He was 
one of these big-chopped fellers with a mouth 
set more’n half way up from his chin and little 
thin lips like the edge of a knife blade, and just 
as full of blood — face, big and rustic-finished. 

“I says to myself, ‘Bud, it looks like you 
wouldn’t be forced to prospect for a living any 
more this season. If that old sport turns him- 
self loose you’re going to get “life” three times 
and a holdover.’ 

“Next morning they tried every way to 
make me talk. Once in a while the old man 
looked at me puzzled and searching, but I 
didn’t know him from a sweat-pad, and just 
paid strict attention to being dumb. 


1 


60 


PARDNERS 


“It was mighty hard, too. I got so nervous 
my mouth simply ached to let out a cayoodle. 
The words kept trying to crawl through my 
oesophagus, and when I backed ’em up, they 
slid down and stood around in groups, hang- 
ing onto the straps, gradually filling me with 
witful gems of thought. 

“The Colonel talked to me serious and 
quiet, like I had good ears, and says, ‘My 
man, you can understand every word I say, 
I’m sure, and what your object is in main- 
taining this ridiculous silence, I don’t know. 
You’re accused of a crime, and it looks 
serious for you.’ 

“Then he gazes at me queer and intent, 
and says, ‘If you only knew how bad you are 
making your case you’d make a clean breast of 
it. Come now, let’s get at the truth.’ 

“Them thought jewels and wads of repartee 
was piling up in me fast, like tailings from a 
ground-sluice, till I could feel myself getting 
bloated and pussy with langwidge, but I 
thought, ‘No! to-morrow “Kink” ’ll be safe, 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 61 
and then I’ll throw a jolt into this man’s 
camp that’ll go down in history. They’ll think 
some Chinaman’s been thawing out a box of 
giant powder when I let out my roar.’ 

“I goes to the guard-house again, with a 
soldier at my back. Everything would have 
been all right if we hadn’t run into a mule 
team. 

“They had been freighting from the rail- 
road, and as we left the barracks we ran afoul 
of four outfits, three span to the wagon, with 
the loads piled on till the teams was all lather 
and the wheels complainin’ to the gods, trying 
to pass the corner of the barracks where there 
was a narrow opening between the buildings. 

“Now a good mule-driver is the littlest, 
orneriest speck in the human line that’s known 
to the microscope, but when you get a poor 
one, he’d spoil one of them cholera germs you 
read about just by contact. The leader of this 
bunch was worse than the worst; strong on 
whip-arm, but surprising weak on judgment. 
He tried to' make the turn, run plump into the 


6£ 


PARDNERS 


comer of the building, stopped, backed, swung* 
and proceeded to get into grief. 

“The mules being hot and nervous, he sent 
them all to the loco patch instanter. They be- 
gan to plunge and turn and back and snarl. 
Before you could say ‘Craps! you lose,’ them 
shave-tails was giving the grandest exhibition 
of animal idiocy in the Territory, barring the 
teamster. He follered their trail to the mad- 
house, yanking the mouths out of them, cruel 
and vicious. 

“Now, one mule can cause a heap of trib- 
ulation, and six mules can break a man’s 
heart, but there wasn’t no excuse for that 
driver to stand up on his hind legs, close his 
eyes, and throw thirty foot of lash into that 
plungin’, buckin’, white-eyed mess. When he 
did it, all the little words inside of me began to 
foam and fizzle like sedlitz; out they came, 
biling, in mouthfuls, and streams, and squirts, 
backwards, sideways, and through my nose. 

“‘Here! you infernal half-spiled, dog-rob- 
bing walloper,’ I says; ‘you don’t know 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 63 
enough to drive puddle ducks to a pond. You 
quit heaving that quirt or I’ll harm you past 
healing.’ 

He turned his head and grit out something 
through his teeth that stimulated my circula- 
tion. I skipped over the wheels and put my 
left onto his neck, fingering the keys on his 
blow-pipe like a flute. Then I give him a tos? 
and gathered up the lines. Say! it was like the 
smell of grease-paint to an actor man for me to 
feel the ribbons again, and them mules knew 
they had a chairman who savvied ’em too, 
and had mule talk pat, from soda to hock. 

“I just intimated things over them with 
that whip, and talked to them like they was 
my own flesh and blood. I starts at the worst 
words the English langwidge and the range 
had produced, to date, and got steadily and 
rapidly worse as long as I talked. 

“Arizony may be slow in the matter of 
standing collars and rag-time, but she leads 
the world in profanity. Without being swelled 
on myself, I’ll say, too, that I once had more’n 


64 


PARDNERS 


a local reputation in that line, having originated 
some quaint and feeling conceits which has 
won modest attention, and this day I was cer- 
tainly trained to the minute. 

“I addressed them brutes fast and earnest 
for five minutes steady, and never crossed my 
trail or repeated a thought. 

“It must have been sacred and beautiful. 
Anyhow, it was strong enough to soak into 
their pores so that they strung out straight 
as a chalk-line. Then I lifted them into the 
collars, and we rumbled past the building, 
swung in front of the commissary door, cramp- 
ed and stopped. With the wheelers on their 
haunches, I backed up to the door square as a 
die. 

“I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and 
looked up into the grinning face of about fifty 
swatties, realizing I was a mute — and a 
prisoner. 

“I heard a voice say, ‘Bring me that man.’ 
There stood the Colonel oozing out wrath at 
every pore. 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 65 

“I parted from that wagon hesitating and 
reluctant, but two soldiers to each leg will bust 
any man’s grip. I lost some clothes, too, after 
we hit the ground, but I needed the exercise. 

“The old man was alone in his office when 
they dragged me in, and he sent my guards 
out. 

“‘So you found your voice, did you?’ he 
says. 

“‘Yes, sir,’ I answers. ‘It came back unex- 
pected, regular miracle.’ 

“ He drummed on the table for a long time, 
and then says, sort of immaterial and irrever- 
ent, ‘You’re a pretty good mule puncher, eh ?’ 

“ ‘ It ain’t for me to say I’m the best in the 
Territory,’ I says; ‘but I’m curious to meet 
the feller that claims the title.’ 

“He continues, ‘It reminds me of an exhibi- 
tion I saw once, back in New Mexico, long 
time ago, at the little Flatwater Canyon.’ 

“‘Maybe you’ve heard tell of the fight there 
when the Apaches were up ? Yes ? Well, I hap- 
pened to be in that scrimmage.’ 


66 


PARDNERS 


“‘I was detailed with ten men to convoy a 
wagon train through to Fort Lewis. We had 
no trouble till we came to the end of that can- 
yon, just where she breaks out onto the flats. 
There we got it. They were hidden up on the 
ridges ; we lost two men and one wagon before 
we could get out onto the prairie. 

“‘I got touched up in the neck, first clatter, 
and was bleeding pretty badly; still I hung to 
my horse, and we stood ’em off till the teams 
made it out of the gulch; but just as we came 
out my horse fell and threw me — broke his 
leg. I yelled to the boys : 

“‘“Go on! For God’s sake go on!” Any de- 
lay there meant loss of the whole outfit. Be- 
sides, the boys had more than they could 
manage, Injuns on three sides. 

“‘We had a young Texan driving the last 
wagon. When I went down he swung those 
six mules of his and came back up that trail 
into the gut, where the bullets snapped like 
grasshoppers. 

“‘It was the prettiest bit of driving I ever 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 67 
saw, not to mention nerve. He whirled the 
outfit between me and the bluff on two wheels, 
yelling, “Climb on! Climb on! We ain’t going 
to stay long!” I was just able to make it onto 
the seat. In the turn they dropped one of his 
wheelers. He ran out on the tongue and cut 
the brute loose. We went rattling down the 
gulch behind five mules. All the time there 
came out of that man’s lungs the fiercest 
stream of profanity my ears ever burned un- 
der. I was pretty sick for a few weeks, so I 
never got a chance to thank that teamster. He 
certainly knew the mind of an army mule, 
though. His name was — let me see — Wig- 
gins — yes, Wiggins.’ 

“‘Oh, no it wasn’t,’ I breaks in, foolish; 
‘it was Joyce.’ 

“Then I stopped and felt like a kid, for the 
Colonel comes up and shuts the circulation out 
of both my hands. 

“‘I wasn’t sure of you, Bill,’ he says, ‘till I 
saw you preside over those mules out there and 
heard your speech — then I recognized the 


68 


PARDNERS 


gift.’ He laughed like a boy, still making free 
with my hands. ‘I’m darn glad to see you, Bill 
Joyce. Now then,’ he says, ‘tell me all about 
this killing up in the hills,’ and I done so. 

“After I finished he never said anything 
for a long time, just drummed the desk again 
and looked thoughtful. 

‘“It’s too bad you didn’t speak out, Bill, 
when you first came in. Now, you’ve showed 
everybody that you can talk — just a little, 
anyhow,’ and he smiles, ‘and they all think 
you’re the man caused the trouble. I don’t see 
but that you’ve got to stand trial. I wish I 
could help you, Bill.’ 

“‘But see here, Colonel,’ I says; ‘I couldn’t 
squeal on ‘Kink.’ We’re pardners. I just had 
to give him a chance to cut. I played dumb 
’cause I knew if I talked at all, being simple 
and guileless, you all would twist me up and 
have the whole thing in a jiffy. That man give 
me the last drop of water in his canteen on the 
Mojave, and him with his own tongue swelled 
clean out of his mouth, too. When we was 


The Mule Driver and the Garrulous Mute 69 
snowed in, up in the Bitter Roots, with me 
snow-blind and starving, he crawled from 
Sheeps-Horn clean to Miller’s — snow twelve 
foot deep, too, and nary a snow-shoe in miles, 
but he brought the outfit in to where I was 
lyin’ ’bout gone in. He lost some fingers and 
more toes wallering through them mountain 
drifts that day, but he never laid down till he 
brought the boys back. 

‘“Colonel! we’ve slept on the same blanket, 
we’ve et the same grub, we’ve made and lost 
together, and I had to give him a show, that’s 
all. I’m into this here trouble now. Tell me 
how I’m going to get out. What would you 
do?’ 

“He turns to the open window and says: 
‘Partners are partners! That’s my horse out 
there at that post. If I were you I’d run like 
hell.’ 

“That was the willingest horse I ever rode, 
and I hated to sell him, but he was tolable used 
up when I got across the line.” 


THE COLONEL AND THE 
HORSE-THIEF 



THE COLONEL AND THE HORSE-THIEF 

Those marks on my arm ? Oh ! I got ’em play- 
in’ horse-thief. Yes, playin’. I wasn’t a real 
one, you know — Well, I s’pose it was sort of 
% queer game. Came near bein’ my last too, 
and if Black Hawk hadn’t been the best horse 
in Texas the old Colonel would’ve killed me 
sure. He chased me six miles as it was — me 
with one arm full of his buckshot and anxious 
to explain, and him strainin’ to get in range 
again and not wishin’ any further particulars. 

That was way back in the sixties, when I was 
as wild a lad as ever straddled a pony. 

You see five of us had gone over into the 
Crow Nation to race horses with the Indians, 
and it was on the way back that the old man 
and the bullet holes figger in the story. 

At the beginnin’ it was Jim Barrett’s plan, 


74 


PARDNERS 


and it had jest enough risk and devilment in it 
to suit a harum-scarum young feller like me; 
so we got five of the boys who had good horses, 
lumped together all of our money, and rode 
out to invade the reservation. 

You know how an Indian loves to run horses ? 
Well, the Crows had a good deal of money 
then, and our scheme was to go over there, 
get up a big race, back our horses with all we 
had, and take down the wealth. 

Takin’ chances ? Don’t you believe it. 
That’s where the beauty of Jim’s plan com- 
menced to sort of shine through. 

You see, as soon as the money was up and 
the horses started, every Indian would be 
watchin’ the race and yellin’ at the nags, then, 
in the confusion, our boys was to grab the 
whole pot, Indian’s money and ours too, and 
we’d make our get away across the river back 
into Texas. 

We figured that we could get a few minutes 
start of ’em, and, with the horses we had un- 
der us, there wasn’t much danger of their 


The Colonel and the Horse-Thief 75 
gettin’ in range before we crossed back to 
where they couldn’t follow us. 

Well, sir! I never see anything work out like 
that scheme did. Them Crows was dead anx- 
ious to run their ponies and seemed skeered 
that we wouldn’t let ’em get all their money 
up. 

As we was eatin’ supper the night before 
the race, Donnelly says: “Boys, I’m sore that 
we didn’t have more coin. If we’d worked ’em 
right they’d ’a’ give us odds. We could ’a’ got 
five to three anyhow, and maybe more.” 

“They shore have got a heap of confidence 
in them skates of their’n,” says “Kink” Mar- 
tin. “I never see anybody so anxious to play 
a race in my life. If it wasn’t all planned out 
the way it is, I’d like to stick and see which 
hoss is the best. I’d back Black Hawk agin any 
hunk of meat in the Territory, with the Kid 
here in the saddle.” 

They’d ribbed it up for me to ride Martin’s 
mare, Black Hawk, while a little feller named 
Hollis rode his own horse. 


76 


PARDNERS 


Donnelly’s part was to stay in the saddle and 
keep the other horses close to Barrett and Mar- 
tin. They was to stick next to the money, and 
one of ’em do the bearin’ off of the booty 
while the other made the protection play. 

We hoped in the excitement to get off with- 
out harmin’ any of Uncle Sam’s pets, but all 
three of the boys had been with the Rangers 
^nd I knew if it came to a show down, they 
wouldn’t hesitate to “pot” one or two in 
gittin’ away. 

We rode out from camp the next mornin’ 
to where we’d staked out a mile track on the 
prairie and it seemed as if the whole Crow 
Nation was there, and nary a white but us five. 

They’d entered two pretty good-lookin ’ 
horses and had their jockeys stripped down to 
breech-clouts, while Hollis and me wore our 
whole outfits on our backs, as we didn’t ex- 
actly figger on dressin’ after the race, least- 
ways, not on that side of the river. 

Just before we lined up, Jim says: “Now 
you — all ride like — , and when you git to the 


The Colonel and the Horse-Thief 77 
far turn we’ll let the guns loose and stampede 
the crowd. Then jest leave the track and make 
a break fer the river, everybody fer himself. 
We’ll all meet at them cottonwoods on the 
other side, so we can stand ’em off if they try 
to swim across after us.” 

That would have been a sure enough hot 
race if we had run it out, for we all four got as 
pretty a start as I ever see and went down the 
line all together with a-bangin’ of hoofs and 
Indian yells ringin’ in our ears. 

I had begun to work Black Hawk out of 
the bunch to get a clear start across the prairie 
at the turn, when I heard the guns begin snap- 
pin’ like pop-corn. 

“They’ve started a’ready,” yelled Hollis, 
and we turned the rearin’ horses toward the 
river, three miles away, leavin’ them two sav- 
ages tearin’ down the track like mad. 

I glanced back as I turned, but, instead of 
seein’ the boys in the midst of a decent re- 
treat, the crowd was swarmin’ after ’em like 
a nest of angry hornets, while Donnelly, with 


78 


PARDNERS 


his reins between his teeth, was blazin’ away 
at three reds who were right at Barrett’s heels 
as he ran for his horse. Martin was lashin’ his 
jumpin’ cayuse away from the mob which 
sputtered and spit angry shots after him. 
Bucks were runnin’ here and there and hastily 
mountin’ their ponies — while an angry roar 
came to me, punctuated by the poppin’ of the 
guns. 

Hollis and I reached the river and swam it 
half a mile ahead of the others and their yellin’ 
bunch of trailers, so we were able to protect 
’em in their crossin’. 

I could see from their actions that Bennett 
and Martin was both hurt and I judged the 
deal hadn’t panned out exactly accordin’ to 
specifications. 

The Crows didn’t attempt to cross in the 
teeth of our fire, however, being satisfied with 
what they’d done, and the horses safely brought 
our three comrades drippin’ up the bank to 
where we lay takin’ pot-shots at every bunch of 
feathers that approached the opposite bank. 


The Colonel and the Horse-Thief 79 

We got Barrett’s arm into a sling, and, as 
Martin’s hurt wasn’t serious, we lost no time 
in gettin’ away. 

“They simply beat us to it,” complained 
Barrett, as we rode south. “You all had jest 
started when young Long Hair grabs the sack 
and ducks through the crowd, and the whole 
bunch turns loose on us at once. We wasn’t 
expectin’ anything so early in the game, and 
they winged me the first clatter. I thought sure 
it was off with me when I got this bullet in the 
shoulder, but I used the gun in my left hand 
and broke for the nearest pony.” 

“They got me, too, before I saw what was 
up,” added Martin; “but I tore out of there 
like a jack-rabbit. It was all done so cussed 
quick that the first thing I knew I’d straddled 
my horse and was makin’ tracks. Who’d a 
thought them durned Indians was dishonest 
enough fer a trick like that ?” 

Then Donnelly spoke up and says: “Boys, 
as fur as the coin goes, we’re out an’ injured; 
w T e jest made a ‘Mexican stand-off’ — lost our 


PARDNERS 


80 

money, but saved our lives — and mighty 
lucky at that, from appearances. What I want 
to know now is, how we’re all goin’ to get 
home, clean across the State of Texas, with- 
out a dollar in the outfit, and no assets but our 
guns and the nags.” 

That was a sure tough proposition, and we 
had left it teetotally out of calculations. We’d 
bet every bean on that race, not seein’ how we 
could lose. In them days there wasn’t a rail- 
road in that section, ranches were scatterin’, 
and people weren’t givin’ pink teas to every 
stranger that rode up — especially when they 
were as hard-lookin’ as we were. 

“We’ve got to eat, and so’s the horses,” says 
Hollis, “but no rancher is goin’ to welcome 
with open arms as disreputable an outfit as we 
are. Two men shot up, and the rest of us with- 
out beddin’, grub, money, or explanations. 
Them’s what we need — explanations. I don’t 
exactly see how we’re goin’ to explain our fix 
to the honest hay-diggers, either. Everybody’ll 
think some sheriff is after us, and two to one 


The Colonel and the Horse-Thief 81 
they’ll put some officer on our trail, and we’ll 
have more trouble. I believe I’ve had all I 
want for a while.” 

“I’ll tell you how we’ll work it,” I says. 
“One of us’ll be the sheriff of Guadalupe 
County, back home, with three deputies, 
bringin’ back a prisoner that we’ve chased 
across the State. We’ll ride up to a ranch an’ 
demand lodgin’ for ourselves and prisoner in 
the name of the State of Texas and say that 
we’ll pay with vouchers on the county in the 
morning.” 

“No, sir! not fer me,” says Martin. “I’m 
not goin’ in fer forgery. It’s all right to prac- 
tice a little mild deception on our red brothers, 
as we figgered on doing, but I’m not goin’ to 
try to flimflam the State of Texas. Our trou- 
bles ’d only be startin’ if we began that game.” 

“Your plan’s all right, Kid,” says Bennett 
to me. “You be the terrible desperado that 
I’m bringin’ home after a bloody fight, where 
you wounded Martin and me, and ’most es- 
caped. You’ll have ev’ry rancher’s wife givin* 


82 


PARDNERS 


you flowers and weepin’ over your youth and 
kissin’ you good-bye. In the mornin’, when 
we’re ready to go and I’m about to fix up the 
vouchers for our host, you break away and 
ride like the devil. We’ll all tear off a few shots 
and foller in a hurry, leavin’ the farmer hopin’ 
that the villain is recaptured and the girls 
tearfully prayin’ that the gallunt and mis- 
guided youth escapes.” 

It seemed to be about our only resort, as 
the country was full of bad men, and we were 
liable to get turned down cold if we didn’t 
have some story, so we decided to try it on. 

We rode up to a ranch ’bout dark, that night, 
me between the others, with my hands tied be- 
hind me, and Jim called the owner out. 

“I want a night’s lodgin’ fer my deputies 
and our prisoner,” he says. “I’m the sheriff of 
Guadalupe County, and I’ll fix up the bill in 
the mornin’.” 

Come in! Come in!” the feller says, callin’ 
a man for the horses. “ Glad to accommodate 
youo Who’s your prisoner ?” 


The Colonel and the Horse-Thief 83 

“That’s Texas Charlie that robbed the 
Bank of Euclid single-handed,” answers Jim. 
“He give us a long run clean across the State, 
but we got him jest as he was gettin’ over into 
the Indian Territory. Fought like a tiger.” 

It worked fine. The feller, whose name was 
Morgan, give us a good layout for the night 
and a bully breakfast next morning. 

That desperado game was simply great. 
The other fellers attended to the horses, and 
I jest sat around lookin’ vicious, and had my 
grub brought to me, while the women acted 
sorrowful and fed me pie and watermelon 
pickles. 

When we was ready to leave next morn- 
ing, Jim says: “Now, Mr. Morgan, I’ll fix 
up them vouchers with you,” and givin’ me the 
wink, I let out a yell, and jabbin’ the spurs into 
Black Hawk, we cleared the fence and was 
off like a puff of dust, with the rest of ’em 
shootin’ and screamin’ after me like mad. 

Say! It was lovely — and when the boys 
overtook me, out of sight of the house, Mor- 


84 


PARDNERS 


gan would have been astonished to see the 
sheriff, his posse, and the terrible desperado 
doubled up in their saddles laughin’ fit to bust. 

Well, sir! we never had a hitch in the pro- 
ceedings for five days, and I was gettin’ to feel 
a sort of pride in my record as a bank-robber, 
forger, horse-thief, and murderer, accordin' 
to the way Bennett presented it. He certainly 
was the boss liar of the range. 

He had a story framed up that painted me 
as the bloodiest young tough the Lone Star 
had ever produced, and it never failed to get 
me all the attention there was in the house. 

One night we came to the best lookin’ place 
we’d seen, and, in answer to Jim’s summons, 
out walked an old man, followed by two of the 
prettiest girls I ever saw, who joined their 
father in invitin’ us in. 

“ Glad to be of assistance to you, Mr. Sher- 
iff,” he said. “My name is Purdy, sir! Colonel 
Purdy, as you may have heard. In the Mexican 
War, special mention three times for distin- 
guished conduct. These are my daughters, sir! 


The Colonel and the Horse- Thief 85 
Annabel and Marie.” As we went in, he con- 
tinued: “You say you had a hard time gettin* 
your prisoner? He looks young for a crim- 
inal. What’s he wanted for ?” 

Somehow, when I saw those girls blushin’ 
and bowin’ behind their father, I didn’t care 
to have my crimes made out any blacker’n 
necessary and I tried to give Jim the high-sign 
to let me off easy — just make it forgery or 
arson — but he was lookin’ at the ladies, and 
evidently believin’ in the strength of a good 
impression, he said: “Well, yes! He’s young 
but they never was a old man with half his 
crimes. He’s wanted for a good many things in 
different places, but I went after him for horse- 
stealin’ and murder. Killed a rancher and his 
little daughter, then set fire to the house and 
ran off a bunch o’ stock.” 

“Oh! Oh! How dreadful!” shuddered the 
girls, backin’ off with horrified glances at me. 

I tried to get near Jim to step on his foot, but 
the old man was glarin’ at me somethin’ awful. 

“ Come to observe him closely, he has a de- 


PARDNERS 


86 

praved face,” says he. “He looks the thorough 
criminal in every feature, dead to every decent 
impulse, I s’pose.” 

I could have showed him a live impulse 
that would have surprised him about then. 

In those days I was considered a pretty 
handsome feller too, and I knew I had Jim 
beat before the draw on looks, but he con- 
tinues makin’ matters worse. 

“Yes, and he’s desperate too. One of the 
worst I ever see. We had an awful fight with 
him up here on the line of the Territory. He 
shot Martin and me before we got him. Ye see, 
I wanted to take him alive, and so I took 
chances on gettin’ hurt. 

“Thank ye, Miss; my arm does ache con- 
siderable; of course, if you’d jest as soon dress 
it — Oh, no ! I’m no braver’n anybody else, I 
guess. Nice of ye to say so, anyhow,” and he 
went grinnin’ out into the kitchen with the 
girls to fix up his arm. 

The old man insisted on havin’ my feet 
bound together and me fastened to a chair. 


The Colonel and the Horse-Thief 87 
and said: “Yes, yes, I know you can watch 
him, but you’re in my house now, and I feel a 
share of the responsibility upon me. I’ve had 
experience with desperate characters and I’m 
goin’ to be sure that this young reprobate don’t 
escape his just punishment. Are you sure you 
don’t need more help gettin’ him home? I’ll 
go with you if — ” 

“Thank ye,” interrupted Hollis. “We’ve 
chased the scoundrel four hundred miles, and 
I reckon, now we’ve got him, we can keep him. 

At supper, Jim with his arm in a new sling, 
sat between the two girls who cooed over him 
and took turns feedin’ him till it made me 
sick. 

The old man had a nigger move my chair 
up to the foot of the table and bring me a plate 
of coarse grub after they all finished eatin’. 

He had tied my ankles to the lower rung of 
the chair himself, and when I says to the nig- 
ger, “Those cords have plum stopped my cir- 
culation, just ease ’em up a little,” he went 
straight up. 


88 


PARDNERS 


“Don’t you touch them knots, Sam!” he 
roared. “I know how to secure a man, and 
don’t you try any of your games in my house, 
either, you young fiend. I’d never forgive 
myself if you escaped.” 

I ate everything I could reach, which wasn’t 
much, and when I asked for the butter he 
glared at me and said: “Butter’s too good for 
horse-thieves; eat what’s before you.” 

Every time I’d catch the eye of one of the 
girls and kind of grin and look enticing, she’d 
shiver and tell Jim that the marks of my de- 
pravity stood out on my face like warts on a 
toad. 

Jim and the boys would all grin like idiots 
and invent a new crime for me. On the square, 
if I’d worked nights from the age of three 1 
couldn’t have done half they blamed me for. 

They put it to the old man so strong that 
when he turned in he chained me to Sam, the 
cross-eyed nigger that stood behind me at sup- 
per, and made us sleep on the floor. 

I told Sam that I cut a man’s throat once 


The Colonel and the Horse-Thief 89 
because he snored, and that nigger never closed 
an eye all night. I was tryin’ to get even with 
somebody. 

After breakfast, when it came time to leave, 
Donnelly untied my feet and led me out into the 
yard, where the girls were hangin’ around the 
Colonel and Jim, who was preparin’ to settle up. 

As we rode up the evening before, I had 
noticed that we turned in from the road 
through a lane, and that the fence was too high 
to jump, so, when I threw my leg over Black 
Hawk, I hit Donnelly a swat in the neck, and, 
as he did a stage-fall, I swept through the gate 
and down the lane. 

The old man cut the halter off one of his 
Mexican war-whoops, and broke through the 
house on the run, appearin’ at the front door 
with his shot-gun just as I checked up to make 
the turn onto the main road. 

As I swung around, doubled over the horse’s 
neck, he let drive with his old blunderbuss, and 
I caught two buckshot in my right arm where 
you see them marks. 


90 


PARDNERS 


I had sense enough to hang on and ride for 
my life, because I knew the old fire-eater 
would reckon it a pleasure to put an end to 
such a wretch as me, if he got half a chance. 

I heard him howl, “Come on boys! We’ll 
get him yet,” and, over my shoulder, I saw 
him jump one of his loose horses standin’ in 
the yard and come tearin’ down the lane, 
ahead of the befuddled sheriff and posse, his 
white hair streamin’ and the shot-gun wavin’ 
aloft, as though chargin’ an army of greasers 
at the head of his regiment. 

From the way he drew away from the boys, 
I wouldn’t have placed any money that he was 
wrong either. 

I’ve always wondered how the old man ever 
got through that war with only three recom- 
mendations to the government. 

He certainly kept good horses too, for in five 
minutes we’d left the posse behind, and I saw 
him madly urgin’ his horse into range, re- 
loadin’ as he came. 

As I threw the quirt into the mare with my 


The Colonel and the Horse- Thief 91 
good arm, I allowed I’d had about all the 
horse-stealin’ I wanted for a while. 

The old devil finally saw he was losin* 
ground in spite of his best efforts, and let me 
have both barrels. I heard the shot patter on 
the hard road behind me, and hoped he’d quit 
and go home, but I’m blamed if he didn’t 
chase me five miles further before turnin’ back, 
in hopes I’d cast a shoe or something would 
happen to me. 

I believe I was on the only horse in Texas 
that could have outrun the Colonel and his 
that mornin’. 

About noon I stopped at a blacksmith’s 
shop, half dead with pain, and had my arm 
dressed and a big jolt of whiskey. 

As the posse rode up to me, sittin’ in the sun 
by the lathered flanks of my horse and nursin’ 
my arm, Jim yells out: “Here he is! Surround 
him, boys! You’re our prisoner!” 

“No! I’m blamed if I am,” I says. “You’ll 
have to get another desperado. After this, I’m 
the sheriff!” 


/ 


/ 


THE THAW AT SLISCO’S 































































































THE THAW AT SLISCO’S 

The storm broke at Salmon Lake, and we ran 
for Slisco’s road-house. It whipped out from 
the mountains, all tore into strips coming 
through the saw-teeth, lashing us off the glare 
ice and driving us up against the river banks 
among the willows. Cold? Well, some! My 
bottle of painkiller froze slushy, like lemon 
punch. 

There’s nothing like a warm shack, with a 
cache full of grub, when the peaks smoke and 
the black snow-clouds roar down the gulch. 

Other “mushers” were ahead of us at the 
road-house, freighters from Kougarok, an 
outfit from Teller going after booze, the mail- 
carrier, and, who do you reckon ? — Annie 
Black. First time I had seen her since she was 
run out of Dawson for claim jumping. 


96 PARDNERS 

Her and me had’nt been essential to one an- 
other since I won that suit over a water right 
on Eldorado. 

“Hello, Annie,” says I, clawing the ice out 
of my whiskers ; 4 4 finding plenty of claims down 
here to relocate?” 

“Shut up, you perjured pup,” says she, full 
of disappointing affabilities; 44 1 don’t want 
any dealings with a lying, thieving hypocrite 
like you, Billy Joyce.” 

Annie lacks the sporting instinct; she ain’t 
got the disposition for cup-racing. Never knew 
her to win a case, and yet she’s the instigatress 
of more emotional activities than all the mark- 
ed cards and home distilled liquor in Alaska. 

“See here,” says 1, 44 a prairie dog and a rat- 
tler can hole up together, but humans has got 
to be congenial, so, seein’ as we’re all stuck to 
live in the same room till this blizzard blizzes 
out, let’s forget our troubles. I’m as game a 
Hibernian as the next, but I don’t hibernate 
till there’s a blaze of mutual respect going.” 

44 Blaze away,” says she, 44 though I leave it 


The Thaw at Slisccfs 97 

to the crowd if you don’t look and act like a 
liar and a grave robber.” Her speech is sure 
full of artless hostilities. 

Ain’t ever seen her ? Lord ! I thought every- 
body knew Annie Black. She drifted into camp 
one day, tall, slab-sided, ornery to the view, 
and raising fifty or upwards; disposition un- 
certain as frozen dynamite. Her ground plans 
and elevations looked like she was laid out 
for a man, but the specifications hadn’t been 
follered. We ain’t consumed by curiosity re- 
garding the etymology of every stranger that 
drifts in, and as long as he totes his own pack, 
does his assessments, and writes his location 
notices proper, it goes. Leastways, it went till 
she hit town. In a month she had the brotherly 
love of that camp gritting its teeth and throw- 
ing back twisters. ’Twas all legitimate, too, and 
there never was a pennyweight of scandal con- 
nected with her name. No, sir! Far’s conduct 
goes, she’s always been the shinin’ female 
example of this country; but them qualities let 
her out. 


98 


PARDNERS 


First move was to jump Bat Ruggles’s town 
lot. He had four courses of logs laid for a cabin 
when “Scotty” Bell came in from the hills 
with $1800 in coarse gold that he’d rocked out 
of a prospect shaft on Bat’s Moose’s Creek 
claim. 

Naturally Bat made general proclamation of 
thirst, and our town kinder dozed violently 
into a joyful three days’ reverie, during which 
period of coma the recording time on Bat’s lot 
ran out. 

He returns from his “hootch-hunt” to com- 
plete the shack, and finds Annie overseeing 
some “Siwashes” put a pole roof on it. Of 
course he promotes a race-war immediate, 
playing the white “open” and the red to lose, 
so to speak, when she up an’ spanks his face, 
addressing expurgated, motherly cuss- words 
at him like he’d been a bad boy and swallered 
his spoon, or dug an eye out of the kitten. Bat 
realizes he’s against a strange system and 
draws out of the game. 

A week later she jumps No. 3, Gold Bottom, 


The Thaw at Slisco’s 99 

because Donnelly stuck a pick in his foot and 
couldn’t stay to finish the assessment. 

“I can’t throw her off, or shoot her up,” 
says he, “or even cuss at her like I want to, 
’cause she’s a lady.” And it appeared like 
that’d been her graft ever since — presumin’ 
on her sex to make disturbances. In six months 
we hated her like pizen. 

There wasn’t a stampede in a hundred 
miles where her bloomers wasn’t leading, for 
she had the endurance of a moose; and be- 
tween excitements she prospected for trouble 
in the manner of relocations. 

I’ve heard of fellers speakin’ disrespectful to 
her and then wandering around dazed and 
loco after she’d got through painting word 
pictures of ’em. It goes without saying she was 
generally popular and petted, and when the 
Commissioner invited her to duck out down 
the river, the community sighed, turned over, 
and had a peaceful rest — first one since she’d 
come in. 

I hadn’t seen her from that time till I blow- 


TOO 


PARDNERS 


ed into Slisco’s on the bosom of this forty mile, 
forty below blizzard. 

Setting around the fire that night I found 
that she’d just lost another of her famous law- 
suits — claimed she owned a fraction ’longside 
of No. 20 , Buster Creek, and that the Lund 
boys had changed their stakes so as to take in 
her ground. During the winter they’d opened 
up a hundred and fifty feet of awful rich pay 
right next to her line, and she’d raised the devil. 
Injunctions, hearings and appeals, and now 
she was coming back, swearing she’d been 
“ jobbed,” the judge had been bought, and the 
jury corrupted. 

“It’s the richest strike in the district,” says 
she. “They’ve rocked out $11,000 since snow 
flew, and there’s 30,000 buckets of dirt on 
the dump. They can bribe and bulldoze a de- 
cision through this court, but I’ll have that 
fraction yet, the robbers.” 

“Robbers be cussed,” speaks up the mail 
man. “You’re the cause of the trouble your- 
self. If you don’t get a square deal, it’s your 


The Thaw at Slisco’s 101 

own fault — always looking for technicalities 
in the mining laws. It’s been your game from 
the start to take advantage of your skirts, what 
there is of ’em, and jump, jump, jump. Nobody 
believes half you say. You’re a natural dis- 
turber, and if you was a man you’d have been 
hung long ago.” 

I’ve heard her oral formations, and I looked 
for his epidermis to shrivel when she got her 
replications focused. She just soared up and 
busted. 

“Look out for the stick,” thinks I. 

“Woman, am I,” she says, musical as a bum 
gramophone under the slow bell. “I take ad- 
vantage of my skirts, do I ? Who are you, you 
mangy ‘malamoot,’ to criticise a lady? I’m 
more of a man than you, you tin-horn; I want 
no favours; I do a man’s work; I live a man’s 
life; I am a man, and I’m proud of it, but 
you — ; Nome’s full of your kind; you need 
a woman to support you ; you v re a proto- 
plasm, a polyp. Those Swedes changed their 
stakes to cover my fraction. I know it, they 


PARDNERS 


102 

know it, and if it wasn’t Alaska, God would 
know it, but He won’t be in again till spring, 
and then the season’s only three months long. 
I’ve worked like a man, suffered like a man — 99 

“ Why don’t ye’ lose like a man ? ” says he. 

“ I will, and I’ll fight like one, too,” says she, 
while her eyes burned like faggots. “They’ve 
torn away the reward of years of work and 
agony, and they forget I can hate like a man.” 

She was stretched up to high C, where her 
voice drowned the howl of the storm, and her 
seamed old face was a sight. I’ve seen mild, 
shrinky, mouse-shy women ’roused to hell’s 
own fury, and I felt that night that here was a 
bad enemy for the Swedes of Buster Creek. 

She stopped, listening. 

“What’s that? There’s some one at the 
door.” 

“Nonsense,” says one of the freighters. 
“You do so much knocking you can hear the 
echo.” 

“There’s some one at that door,” says she. 

“If there was, they’d come in,” says Joe. 


The Thaw at Slisco's 103 

“ Couldn’t be, this late in this storm,” I adds. 

She came from behind the stove, and we let 
her go to the door alone. Nobody ever seemed 
to do any favours for Annie Black. 

“She’ll be seein’ things next,” says Joe, 
winking. “What’d I tell you? For God’s sake 
close it — you’ll freeze us.” 

Annie opened the door, and was hid to the 
waist in a cloud of steam that rolled in out of 
the blackness. She peered out for a minute, 
stooped, and tugged at something in the dark. 
I was at her side in a jump, and we dragged 
him in, snow-covered and senseless. 

“Quick — brandy,” says she, slashing at 
his stiff “mukluks.” “Joe, bring in a tub of 
snow.” Her voice was steel sharp. 

“Well, I’m danged,” says the mail man. 
“ It’s only an Injun. You needn’t go crazy like 
he was a white.” 

“ Oh, you fool ” says Annie. “ Can’t you see ? 
Esquimaux don’t travel alone. There’s white 
men behind, and God help them if we don’t 
bring him to.” 


104 PARDNERS 

She knew more about rescustications than 
us, and we did what she said, till at last he 
came out of it, groaning — just plumb wore 
out and numb. 

“Talk to him, Joe; you savvy their noise,” 
says I. 

The poor devil showed his excitement, dead 
as he was. 

“There’s two men on the big ‘Cut-off,’” 
Joe translates. “Lost on the portage. There 
was only one robe between ’em, so they rolled 
up in it, and the boy came on in the dark. Says 
they can’t last till morning.” 

“That let’s them out,” says the mail carrier. 
“Too bad we can’t reach them to-night.” 

“What!” snaps Annie. “Reach ’em? Huh! 
1 said you were a jellyfish. Hurry up and get 
your things on, boys.” 

“Have a little sense,” says Joe. “You surely 
ain’t a darn fool. Out in this storm, dark as 
the inside of a cow; blowin’ forty mile, and 
the ‘quick’ froze. Can’t be done. I wonder 
who they are?” 


The Thaw at Slisco*s 105 

He “kowtowed” some more, and at the 
answer of the chattering savage we looked a t 
Annie. 

“Him called Lund,” shivered the Siwash. 

I never see anybody harder hit than her. 
I love a scrap, but I thinks “Billy, she’s having 
a stiff er fight than you ever associated with.” 

Finally she says, kind of slow and quiet: 
“Who knows where the ‘ Cut-off’ starts ?” 

Nobody answers, and up speaks the U. S. 
man again. 

“ You’ve got your nerve, to ask a man out on 
such a night.” 

“If there was one here, I wouldn’t have to 
ask him. There’s people freezing within five 
miles of here, and you hug the stove, saying: 
‘It’s stormy, and we’ll get cold.’ Of course it 
is. If it wasn’t stormy they’d be here too, and 
it’s so cold, you’ll probably freeze. What’s 
that got to do with it ? Ever have your mother 
talk to you about duty ? Thank Heaven I trav- 
elled that portage once, and I can find it again 
if somebody will go with me.” 


106 


PARDNERS 


’Twas a blush raising talk, but nobody up- 
set any furniture getting dressed: 

She continues : 

“ So I’m the woman of this crowd and I hide 
behind my skirts. Mr. Mail Man, show what 
a glorious creature you are. Throw yourself — 
get up and stretch and roar. Oh, you barn- 
yard bantam! Has it had its pap to-night ? 
I’ve a grand commercial enterprise; I’ll take all 
of your bust measurements and send out to 
the States for a line of corsets. Ain’t there half 
a man among you ?” 

She continued in this vein, pollutin’ the air, 
and, having no means of defence, we found our- 
selves follerin’ her out into a yelling storm that 
beat and roared over us like waves of flame. 

Swede luck had guided their shaft onto the 
richest pay-streak in seven districts, and Swede 
luck now led us to the Lund boys, curled up in 
the drifted snow beside their dogs; but it was 
the level head and cool judgment of a woman 
that steered us home in the grey whirl of the 
dawn* 



“ A in't there halj a man among you ? ” 









The Thaw at Slisco’s 107 

During the deathly weariness of that night I 
saw past the calloused hide of that woman and 
sighted the splendid courage cached away be- 
neath her bitter oratory and hosstyle syllo- 
gisms. “ There’s a story there,” thinks I, “an’ 
maybe a man moved in it — though I can’t 
imagine her softened by much affection.” It 
pleased some guy to state that woman’s the 
cause of all our troubles, but I figger they’re 
like whisky — all good, though some a heap 
better’n others, of course, and when a frail, 
little, ninety pound woman gets to bucking 
and acting bad, there’s generally a two hun- 
dred pound man hid out in the brush that put 
the burr under the saddle. 

During the next three days she dressed the 
wounds of them Scow-weegians and nursed 
them as tender as a mother. 

The wind hadn’t died away till along 
came the “Flying Dutchman” from Dugan’s, 
twenty miles up, floatin’ on the skirts of the 
Dlizzard. 

“Hello, fellers. Howdy, Annie. What’s the 


108 


PARDNERS 


matter here?” says he. “We had a woman at 
Dugan’s too — pnrty as a picture; different 
from the Nome bunch — real sort of a lady.” 

“ Who is she ?” says I, “ an’ what’s she doin’ 
out here on the trail ?” 

“Dunno, but she’s all right; come clean 
from Dawson with a dog team; says she’s look- 
ing for her mother.” 

I heard a pan clatter on the floor where 
Annie was washing dishes, and her face went 
a sickly grey. She leaned across, gripping the 
table and straining to ask something, but the 
words wouldn’t come, while “Dutch” con- 
tinues : 

“Somethin’ strange about it, I think. She 
says her ma’s over in the Golden Gate dis- 
trict, workin’ a rich mine. Of course we all 
laughed at her, and said there wasn’t a wo- 
man in the whole layout, ’ceptin’ some folks 
might misconstrue Annie here into a kind of a 
female. She stuck to it though, much as to say 
we was liars. She’s cornin’ on - — what’s the 
matter, Annie — - you ain’t sore at me effemi- 


The Thaw at Slisco’s 109 

natin’ you by the gentle name of female, are 
you?” 

She had come to him, and gripped his 
shoulder, till her long, bony fingers buried 
themselves in his mackinaw. Her mouth was 
twitching, and she hadn’t got she'd of that 
“ first-aid- to-the-injured” look. 

“What name? What name, Dutch? What 
name ? ” She shook him like a rat. 

“Bradshaw — but you needn’t run your 
nails through and clinch ’em. Ow! Le’go my 
white meat. You act like she was your long 
lost baby. What d’ye think of that idea, 
fellers ? Ain’t that a pleasin’ conceit ? Annie 
Black, and a baby. Ha! Ha! that’s a hit. 
Annie and a daughter. A cow-thief and a 
calla-lily.” 

“Dutch,” says I, “you ain’t a-goin’ to make 
it through to Lane’s Landing if you don’t pull 
your freight,” and I drags the darn fool out 
and starts him off. 

When I came in she was huddled onto 
a goods box, shaking and sobbing like 


PARDNERS 


110 

any woman, while the boys sat around and 
champed their bits and stomped. 

“Take me away, Billy,” she says. “For 
God’s sake take me away before she sees me.” 
She slid down to the floor and cried some- 
thing awful. Gents, that was sure the real dis- 
tress, nothing soft and sloppy, but hard, 
wrenchy, deep ones, like you hear at a melo- 
drayma. ’Twas only back in ’99 that I seen 
an awful crying match, though both of the 
ladies had been drinking, so I felt like I was 
useder to emotion than the balance of the boys, 
and it was up to me to take a holt. 

“Madam,” says I, and somehow the word 
didn’t seem out of place any more — “ Mad- 
am, why do you want to avoid this party?” 

“Take me away,” she says. “It’s my 
daughter. She’s going to find me this way, 
all rough and immodest and made fun of. 
But that’s the worst you can say, isn’t it? 
I’m a square woman — you know I am, don’t 
you, boys?” and she looked at us fierce and 
pleadin’. 


The Thaw at Slisco’s 111 

“Sure,” says Joe. “We’ll boost you with the 
girl all right.” 

“ She thinks her father’s dead, but he isn’t 
— he ran away with a show woman — a year 
after we were married. I never told her about 
it, and I’ve tried to make a little lady of 
her.” 

We found out afterwards that she had put 
the girl in a boarding-school, but couldn’t 
seem to make enough for both of them, and 
when the Klondyke wa c struck thought she 
saw a chance. She came north, insulted by 
deck hands and laughed at by the officers. 
At Skagway she nursed a man through typhoid, 
and when he could walk he robbed her. The 
mounted police took everything else she had 
and mocked at her. “Your kind always ha? 
money,” they said. 

That’s how it had been everywhere, and 
that’s why she was so hard and bitter. She’d 
worked and fought like a man, but she’d suf- 
fered like a woman. 

“ I’ve lied and starved and stolen for her,” 


PARDNERS 


112 

said Annie, “to make her think I was doing 
well. She said she was coming in to me, but I 
knew winter would catch her at Dawson, and 
I thought I could head her off by spring.” 

“Now, she’s here; but, men, as your moth- 
ers loved you, save me from my little girl.” 

She buried her face, and when I looked 
at the boys, tears stood in Joe Slisco’s eyes 
and the others breathed hard. Ole Lund, him 
that was froze worst about the hands, spoke 
up: 

“Someboady tak de corner dat blanket an* 
blow may nose.” 

Then we heard voices outside. 

“Hello, in there.” 

Annie stood up, clutching at her throat, and 
stepped behind the corner of the bunks as the 
door opened, framing the prettiest picture this 
old range rider ever saw. 

’Twas a girl, glowing pink and red where 
the cold had kissed her cheeks, with yellow 
curlicues of hair wandering out under her yarn 
cap. Her little fox-trimmed parka quit at the 


113 


The Thaw at Slisco’s 
knees, showing the daintiest pair of — I can’t 
say it. Anyhow, they wasn’t, they just looked 
like ’em, only nicer. 

She stood blinking at us, coming from the 
bright light outside, as cute as a new faro box 
— then : 

“Can you tell me where Mrs. Bradshaw 
lives ? She’s somewhere in this district. I’m her 
daughter — come all the way from the States to 
see her.” 

When she smiled I could hear the heart- 
strings of those ragged, whiskered, frost-bit 
“mushers” bustin’ like banjo strings. 

“You know her, don’t you ?” she says, turn- 
ing to me. 

“Know her. Miss? Well, I should snort! 
There ain’t a prospector on the range that 
ain’t proud and honoured to call her a friend. 
Leastways, if there is I’ll bust his block,” and 
I cast the bad eye on the boys to wise ’em up. 
“Ain’t I right, Joe?” 

“Betcher dam life,” says Joe, sort of over- 
stepping the conventions. 


114 


PARDNERS 


“Then tell me where her claim is. It’s quite 
rich, and you must know it,” says she, appeal- 
ing to him. 

Up against it? Say! I seen the whites of his 
eyes show like he was drownding, and he grin- 
ned joyful as a man kicked in the stummick. 

“ Er — er — I just bought in here, and I 
ain’t acquainted much,” says he. “ Have a 
drink,” and, in his confusions, he sets out the 
bottle of alkalies that he dignifies by the alias 
of booze. Then he continues with reg’lar hu- 
man intelligence. 

“Bill, here, he can tell you where the 
ground is,” and the whelp indicates me. 

Lord knows my finish, but for Ole Lund. 
He sits up in his bunk, swaddled in Annie 
Black’s bandages, and through slits between 
his frost bites, he moults the follering rhetoric : 

“Aye tole you vere de claim iss. She own 
de Nomber Twenty fraction on Buster Creek, 
’longside may and may broder. She’s dam 
good fraction, too.” 

I consider that a blamed white stunt for 


115 


The Thaw at Slisco’s 
Swedes; paying for their lives with the mine 
they swindled her out of. 

Anyhow, it knocked us galley- west. 

I’d formulated a swell climax, involving the 
discovery of the mother, when the mail man 
spoke up, him that had been her particular 
abomination, a queer kind of a break in his 
voice : 

“ Come out of that. v> 

Mrs. Bradshaw moved out into the light, 
and, if I’m any judge, the joy that showed in 
her face rubbed away the bitterness of the past 
years. With an aching little cry the girl ran to 
her, and hid in her arms like a quail. 

We men-folks got accumulated up into a 
dark corner where we shook hands and swore 
soft and insincere, and let our throats hurt, for 
all the world like it was Christmas or we’d got 
mail from home. 


BITTER ROOT BILLINGS. ARBITER 


V 















































































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I 













BITTER ROOT BILLINGS, ARBITER 


Billings rode in from the Junction about 
dusk, and ate his supper in silence. He’d been 
East for sixty days, and, although there lurked 
about him the hint of unwonted ventures, 
etiquette forbade its mention. You see, in 
our country, that which a man gives volun- 
tarily is ofttimes later dissected in smoky 
bunk-houses, or roughly handled round flick- 
ering camp fires, but the privacies he guards are 
inviolate. Curiosity isn’t exactly a lost art, but 
its practice isn’t popular nor hygenic. 

Later, I found him meditatively whittling 
out on the porch, and, as the moment seemed 
propitious, I inquired adroitly: — “Did you 
have a good time in Chicago, ‘Bitter Root’?” 

“Bully,” said he, relapsing into weighty ab- 
sorption. 


wo 


PARDNERS 


“What’d you do?” I inquired with almost 
the certainty of appearing insistent. 

“Don’t you never read the papers?” he in- 
quired, with such evident compassion that 
“Kink” Martin and the other boys snickered. 
This from “Bitter Root,” who scorns litera- 
ture outside of the “Arkansas Printing,” as 
he terms the illustrations! 

“Guess I’ll have to show you my press 
notices,” and from a hip pocket he produced 
a fat bundle of clippings in a rubber band. 
These he displayed jealously, and I stared 
agape, for they were front pages of great metro- 
politan dailies, marred with red and black 
scare heads, in which I glimpsed the words, 
“Billings, of Montana,” “ 4 Bitter Root’ on 
Arbitration,” “A Lochinvar Out of the 
West,” and other things as puzzling. 

“Press Notices!” echoed “Kink” scorn- 
fully. “Wouldn’t that rope ye? He talks like 
Big Ike that went with the Wild West Show. 
When a puncher gets so lazy he can’t earn a 
livin’ by the sweat of his pony, he grows his 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 121 
hair, goes on the stage bustin’ glass balls with 
shot ca’tridges and talks about * press notices/ 
Let’s see ’em, Billings. You pinch ’em as close 
to your stummick as though you held cards in 
a strange poker game.” 

“ Well, I have set in a strange game, amongst 
aliens,” said Billings, disregarding the re 
quest, “ and I’ve held the high cards, also I’ve 
drawed out with honours. I’ve sailed the me- 
dium high seas with mutiny in the stoke-hold; 
I’ve changed the laws of labour, politics and 
municipal economies. I went out of God’s 
country right into the heart of the decayin’ 
East, and by the application of a runnin’ noose 
in a hemp rope I strangled oppression and put 
eight thousand men to work.” He paused 
ponderously. “I’m an Arbitrator!” 

“The deuce you are,” indignantly cried 
“Reddy” the cook. “Who says so ?” 

“Reddy” isn’t up in syntax, and his un- 
reasoning loyalty to Billings is an established 
fact of such standing that his remarks afford 
no conjecture. 


PARDNERS 


\ C Z% 

“Yes, I’ve cut into the ‘Nation’s Peril’ and 
the ‘Cryin’ Evil’ good and strong — walkin’ 
out from the stinks of the Union Stock Yards, 
of Chicago, into the limelight of publicity, via 
the ‘ drunk and disorderly ’ route. 

“You see I got those ten carloads of steers 
into the city all right, but I was so blame busy 
splatterin’ through the tracked-up wastes of 
the cow pens, an’ inhalin’ the sewer gas of the 
west side that I never got to see a newspaper. 
If I’d ’a’ read one, here’s what I’d ’a’ found, 
namely: The greatest, stubbornest, riotin’est 
strike ever known, which means a heap for 
Chicago, she being the wet-nurse of labour 
trouble. 

“The whole river front was tied up. Nary a 
steamer had whistled inside the six-mile crib 
for two weeks, and eight thousand men was 
out. There was hold-ups and blood-sheddin’ 
and picketin’, which last is an alias for as- 
sault with intents, and altogether it was a 
prime place for a cowman, on a quiet vaca- 
tion — just homelike and natural. 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 123 

“It was at this point that I enters, bustin’ 
out of the smoke of the Stock Yards, all sweet 
and beautiful, like the gentle heeroine in the 
play as she walks through the curtains at the 
back of the stage. 

“Now you know there’s a heap of difference 
between the Stock Yards and Chicago — it’s 
just like coming from Arkansas over into the 
United States. 

“ Well, soon as I sold the stock I hit for the 
lake front and began to ground sluice the 
coal dust off of my palate. 

“I was busy working my booze hydraulic 
when I see an arid appearin’ pilgrim ’longside 
lookin’ thirsty as an alkali flat. 

“‘Get in,’ says I, and the way he obeyed 
orders looked like he’d had military training. 
I felt sort of drawed to him from the way he 
handled his licker; took it straight and run- 
nin’ over; then sopped his hands on the bar 
and smelled of his fingers. He seemed to just 
soak it up both ways — reg’lar human blot- 
ter. 


124 


PARDNERS 


“‘You lap it up like a man,’ says I, ‘like a 
cowman — full growed — ever been West ?’ 

“‘Nope,’ says he, ‘born here/ 

‘“Well I’m a stranger,’ says I, ‘out ab- 
sorbin’ such beauties of architecture and free 
lunch as offers along the line. If I ain’t keepin’ 
you up, I’d be glad of your company.’ 

“‘I’m your assistant lunch buster,’ says he, 
and in the course of things he further explained 
that he was a tugboat fireman, out on a strike, 
givin’ me the follerin’ information about the 
tie-up : — 

“ It all come up over a dose of dyspepsia — ” 

“Back up,” interrupted “Kink” squirm- 
ing, “are you plumb bug? Get together! 
You’re certainly the Raving Kid. Ye must 
have stone bruised your heel and got conces- 
sion of the brain.” 

“Yes sir! Indigestion,” Billings continued. 
“Old man Badrich, of the Badrich Trans- 
portation Company has it terrible. It lands on 
his solar every morning about nine o’clock, 
gettin’ worse steady, and reaches perihelion 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 12& 

along about eleven. He can tell the time of 
day by taste. One morning when his mouth 
felt like about ten-forty-five in comes a com 
mittee from Firemen & Engineers Local No. 
21, with a demand for more wages, proddin’ 
him with the intimations that if he didn’t ante 
they’d tie up all his boats.” 

“I ’spose a teaspoonful of bakin’ soda, as- 
similated internally around the environments 
of his appendix would have spared the strike 
and cheated me out of bein’ a hero. As the poet 
might have said — ‘Upon such slender pegs is 
this, our greatness hung.’” 

“Oh, Gawd!” exclaimed Mullins, piously. 

“Anyhow, the bitterness in the old man’s 
inner tubes showed in the bile of his answer, 
and he told ’em if they wanted more money 
he’d give ’em a chance to earn it — they could 
work nights as well as days. He intimated 
further that they’d ought to be satisfied with 
their wages as they’d undoubtedly f oiler the 
same line of business in the next world, and 
.wouldn’t get a cent for feedin’ the fires neither 


126 


PARDNERS 


“Next mornin’ the strike was called, and 
the guy that breathed treachery and walk-outs 
was one ‘Oily’ Heegan, further submerged 
under the titles of President of the Federation 
of Fresh Water Firemen; also Chairman of the 
United Water-front Workmen* which last 
takes in everything doin’ business along the 
river except the wharf-rats and typhoid germs, 
and it’s with the disreputableness of this party 
that I infected myself to the detriment of 
labour and the triumph of the law. 

“D. O’Hara Heegan is an able man, and 
inside of a week he’d spread the strike ’till it 
was the cleanest, dirtiest tie-up ever known. 
The hospitals and morgues was full of non- 
union men, but the river was empty all 
right. Yes, he had a persuadin’ method of 
arbitration quite convincing to the most 
calloused, involving the layin’ on of the lead 
pipe. 

“Things got to be pretty fierce bye-and-bye, 
for they had the police buffaloed, and dis- 
turbances got plentyer than the casualties 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 127 
at a butchers’ picnic. The strikers got hungry, 
too, finally, because the principles of unionism 
is like a rash on your mechanic, skin deep — in- 
side, his gastrics works three shifts a day 
even if his outsides is idle and steaming with 
Socialism. 

“‘Oily’ fed ’em dray loads of eloquence, 
but it didn’t seem to be real fillin’. They’d 
leave the lectures and rob a bakery. 

“He was a wonder though; just sat in his 
office, and kept the ship owners waitin’ in line, 
swearin’ bitter and refined cuss-words about 
‘ignorant fiend’ and ‘cussed pedagogue,’ 
which last, for ‘Kink’s’ enlightenment, means 
a kind of Hebrew meetin’-house. 

“These here details my new friend give me, 
ending with a eulogy on ‘Oily’ Heegan, the 
Idol of the Idle. 

“‘If he says starve, we starve,’ says he, ‘and 
if he says work, we work. See! Oh he’s the 
goods, he is! Let’s go down by the river — 
mebbe we’ll see him.’ So me and Murdock 
hiked down Water Street, where they keep 


ns 


PARDNERS 


mosquito netting over the bar fixtures and 
spit at the stove. 

“We found him, a big mouthed, shifty, 
kind of man, ’bout as cynical lookin’ in the 
face as a black bass, and full of wind as a toad 
fish. I exchanged drinks for principles of so- 
cialism, and doin’ so happened to display my 
roll. Murdock slipped away and made talk 
with a friend, then, when Heegan had left, he 
steers me out the back way into an alley. 
‘Short cut,’ says he ‘to another and a better 
place.’ 

“I follers through a back room; then as 1 
steps out the door I’m grabbed by this new 
friend, while Murdock bathes my head with 
a gas-pipe billy, one of the regulation, strike 
promotin’ kind, like they use for decoyin’ mem- 
bers into the glorious ranks of Labour. 

“I saw a ‘Burning of Rome’ that was a 
dream, and whole cloudbursts of shootin’ 
stars, but I yanked Mr. Enthusiastic Stranger 
away from my surcingle and throwed him 
agin the wall. In the shuffle Murdock shifts 


129 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 
my ballasts though, and steams up the alley 
with my greenbacks, convoyed by his friend. 

“‘Wow-ow,’ says I, givin’ the distress signal 
so that the windows rattled, and reachin’ for 
my holster. I’d ’a’ got them both, only the gun 
caught in my suspender. You see, not antici- 
patin’ any live bird shoot I’d put it inside my 
pants-band, under my vest, for appearances. 
A forty-five is like fresh air to a drownding 
man — generally has to be drawed in haste — 
and neither one shouldn’t be mislaid. I got her 
out at last and blazed away, just a second after 
they dodged around the corner. Then I hit the 
trail after ’em, lettin’ go a few sky- shots and 
gettin’ a ghost-dance holler off my stummick 
that had been troubling me. The wallop on 
the head made me dizzy though, and I zig- 
zagged awful, tackin’ out of the alley right 
into a policeman. 

Wheel’ says I in joy, for he had Murdock 
safe by the bits, buckin’ consid’rable. 

“‘Stan’ aside and le’mme ’lectrocute ’im,’ 
says I. I throwed the gun on him and the 


130 


PARDNERS 


crowd dogged it into all the doorways and 
windows convenient, but I was so weak-mind- 
ed in the knees I stumbled over the curb and 
fell down. 

“Next thing I knew we was all bouncin’ 
over the cobble-stones in a patrol wagon. 

“Well, in the morning I told my story to the 
Judge, plain and unvarnished. Then Murdock 
takes the stand and busts into song, claiming 
that he was cornin’ through the alley toward 
dark Street when I staggered out back of a 
saloon and commenced to shoot at him. He 
saw I was drunk, and fanned out, me shootin’ 
at him with every jump. He had proof, he said, 
and he called for the president of his Union, 
Mr. Heegan. At the name all the loafers and 
stew-bums in the court-room stomped and 
said, ‘Hear, hear,’ while up steps this Napo- 
leon of the Hoboes. 

“ Sure, he knew Mr. Murdock — had known 
him for years, and he was perfectly reliable 
and honest. As to his robbing me, it was pre- 
posterous, because he himself was at the other 


131 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 
end of the alley and saw the whole thing, just 
as Mr. Murdock related it. 

“I jumps up. 4 You’re a liar, Heegan. I was 
buyin’ booze for the two of you ; ’ "but a police- 
man nailed me, chokin’ off my rhetorics. Mr. 
Heegan leans over and whispers to the Judge, 
while I got chilblains along my spine. 

“‘Look here, kind Judge,’ says I real win- 
ning and genteel, ‘this man is so good at ex- 
plainin’ things away, ask him to talk off this 
bump over my ear. I surely didn’t get a buggy 
spoke and laminate myself on the nut. 

“‘That’ll do,’ says the Judge. ‘Mr. Clerk, 
ten dollars and costs — charge, drunk and 
disorderly. Next!’ 

“‘Hold on there,’ says I, ignorant of the in- 
volutions of justice, ‘I guess I’ve got the bulge 
on you this time. They beat you to me, Judge. 
I ain’t got a cent. You can go through me and 
be welcome to half you find. I’ll mail you ten 
when I get home though, honest.’ 

“At that the audience giggled, and the 
Judge says: — 


132 


PARDNER3 


“‘Your humour doesn’t appeal to me, Mr* 
Billings. Of course, you have the privilege of 
working it out.’ Oh, Glory, the ‘Privilege!’ 

“ Heegan nodded at this, and I realized what 
I was against. 

“‘Your honour,’ says I with sarcastic refine- 
ments, ‘science tells us that a perfect vacuum 
ain’t possible, but after watching you I know 
better, and for you, Mr. Workingman’s 
Friend, — us to the floor,’ and I run at Heegan. 

“Pshaw! I never got started, nor I didn’t 
rightfully come to till I rested in the work- 
house, which last figger of speech is a pure and 
beautiful paradox. 

“ I ain’t dwellin’ with glee on the next 
twenty-six days — ten dollars and costs, at 
four bits a day, but I left there saturated with 
such hatreds for Heegan that my breath smell- 
ed of ’em. 

“ I wanders down the river front, hoping the 
fortunes of war would deliver him to me dead 
or alive, when the thought hit me that I’d need 
money. It was bound to take another ten and 


133 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 
^osts shortly after we met, and probably more, 
if I paid for what I got, for I figgered on dis- 
tendin’ myself with satisfaction and his feat- 
ares with uppercuts. Then I see a sign, ‘Non- 
Union men wanted — Big wages.’ In I goes, 
and strains my langwidge through a wire net 
at the cashier. 

“ T want them big wages,’ says I. 

“ ‘What can you do ? ’ 

“‘Anything to get the money,’ says I. ‘What 
does it take to liquidate an assault on a labour 
leader ? ’ 

“ There was a white-haired man in the cage 
who began to sit up and take notice. 

“‘What’s your trouble ?’ says he, and I 
told him. 

“ ‘ If we had a few more like you, we’d bust 
the strike,’ says he, kind of sizin’ me up. ‘I’ve 
got a notion to try it anyhow,’ and he smites 
the desk. ‘ Collins what d’ye say if we tow the 
“Detroit” out ? Her crew has stayed with us so 
far, and they’ll stick now if we’ll say the word. 
The unions are hungry and scrapping among 


PARDNERS 


134 

themselves, and the men want to go back to 
work. It’s just that devil of a Heegan that holds 
’em. If they see we’ve got a tug crew that’ll go f 
they’ll arbitrate, and we’ll kill the strike. ’ 

“‘Yes, sir!’ says Collins, ‘but where’s the 
tug crew, Mr. Badrich ? ’ 

“‘Right here! We three, and Murphy, the 
bookkeeper. Blast this idleness! I want to 
fight.’ 

“‘I’ll take the same,’ says I, ‘when I get 
the price.’ 

“‘That’s all right. You’ve put the spirit into 
me, and I’ll see you through. Can you run an 
engine? Good! I’ll take the wheel, and the 
others’ll fire. It’s going to be risky work, 
though. You won’t back out, eh ?’” 

Reddy interrupted Billings here loudly, 
with a snort of disgust, while “Bitter Root” 
ran his fingers through his hair before con- 
tinuing. Martin was listening intently. 

“The old man arranged to have a squad of 
cops on all the bridges, and I begin antici- 
patin’ hilarities for next day. 


135 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 

“The news got out of course, through the 
secrecies of police headquarters, and when we 
ran up the river for our tow, it looked like every 
striker west of Pittsburg had his family on the 
docks to see the barbecue, accompanied by 
enough cobble-stones and scrap iron to ballast 
a battleship. All we got goin’ up was repar- 
tee, but I figgered we’d need armour gettin’ 
back. 

“We passed a hawser to the ‘Detroit/ and I 
turned the gas into the tug, blowin’ for the 
Wells Street Bridge. Then war began. I leans 
out the door just in time to see the mob 
charge the bridge. The cops clubbed ’em back, 
while a roar went up from the docks and roof 
tops that was like a bad dream. I couldn’t see 
her move none though, and old man Badrich 
blowed again expurgatin’ himself of as nobby 
a line of cuss words as you’ll muster outside 
the cattle belt. 

“‘Soak ’em/ I yells, ‘give ’em all the arbi- 
tration you’ve got handy. If she don’t open; 
we’ll jump her/ and I lets out another notch. 


136 


PARDNERS 


so that we went plowin’ and boilin’ towards 
the draw. 

“It looked like we’d have to hurdle it sure 
enough, but the police beat the crowd back 
just in time. She wasn’t clear open though, and 
our barge caromed off the spiles. It was like a 
nigger buttin’ a persimmon tree — we rattled 
off a shower of missiles like an abnormal hail 
storm. Talk about your coast defence; they 
heaved everything at us from bad names to 
railroad iron, and we lost all our window glass 
the first clatter, while the smoke stack looked 
like a pretzel with cramps. 

“When we scraped through I looked back 
with pity at the ‘Detroit’s’ crew. She hadn’t 
any wheel house, and the helmsman was due to 
get all the attention that was cornin’ to him. 
They’d built up a barricade of potato sacks, 
chicken coops and bic-a-brac around the wheel 
that protected ’em somewhat, but even while I 
watched, some Polack filtered a brick through 
and laid out the quartermaster cold, and he 
was drug off. Oh! it was refined and esthetic. 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 137 

“Well, we run the gauntlet, presented every 
block with stuff rangin’ in tensile strength 
from insults to asphalt pavements, and noise! 
— say, all the racket in the world was a whisper. 
I caught a glimpse of the old man leanin’ out 
of the pilot house, where a window had been, 
his white hair bristly, and his nostrils h’isted, 
embellishin’ the air with surprisin’ flights of 
gleeful profanity. 

“‘Hooray! this is livin’ he yells, spyin’ me 
iovelin’ the deck out from under the junk. 
‘Best scrap I’ve had in years,’ and just then 
some baseball player throwed in from centre 
field, catching him in the neck with a tomato. 
Gee! that man’s an honour to the faculty of 
speech. 

“ I was doin’ bully till a cobble-stone bounc- 
ed into the engine room, makin’ a billiard with 
my off knee, then I got kind of peevish. 

“Rush Street Bridge is the last one, and 
they’d massed there on both sides, like fleas on 
a razorback. Thinks I, ‘ If we make it through 
here, we’ve busted the strike,’ and I glances 


138 


PARDNERS 


back at the ‘Detroit’ just in time to see her crew 
pullin’ their captain into the deck house, limp 
and bleedin’. The barricade was all knocked 
to pieces and they’d flunked absolute. Don’t 
blame ’em much either, as it was sure death 
to stand out in the open under the rain of stuff 
that come from the bridges. Of course with no 
steerin’ she commenced to swing off. 

“ I jumps out the far side of the engine 
room and yells fit to bust my throat. 

“ ‘ Grab that wheel ! Grab it quick — we’ll 
hit the bridge,’ but it was like deef and dumb 
talk in a boiler shop, while a wilder howl went 
up from the water front as they seen what 
they’d done and smelled victory. There’s an 
awfulness about the voice of a blood-mad- 
dened club-swingin’ mob; it lifts your scalp 
like a fright wig, particularly if you are the 
clubee. 

“‘We*ve got one chance,’ thinks I, ‘but if 
she strikes we’re gone. They’ll swamp us sure* 
and all the police in Cook County won’t save 
enough for to hold services on.’ Then I throw- 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 139 
ed a look at the opening ahead and the pessim- 
isms froze in me. 

“ I forgot all about the resiliency of brickbats 
and the table manners of riots, for there, on top 
of a bunch of spiles, ca’m, masterful and 
bloated with perjuries, was ‘Oily’ Heegan 
dictatin’ the disposition of his forces, the light 
of victory in his shifty, little eyes. 

“‘Ten dollars and costs,’ I shrieks, seem’ 
red. ‘ Lemme crawl up them spiles to you. 5 

“Then inspiration seized me. My soul riz up 
and grappled with the crisis, for right under 
my mit, coiled, suggestive and pleadin’, was 
one of the tug’s heavin’ lines, ’bout a three- 
eighths size. I slips a runnin’ knot in the end 
and divides the coils, crouchin’ behind the 
deck-house till we come abeam of him, then I 
straightened, give it a swinging heave, and the 
noose sailed up and settled over him fine and 
daisy. 

“I jerked back, and ‘Oily’ Heegan did a 
high dive from Hush Street that was a geo- 
metrical joy. He hit kind of amateurish, doin’ 


140 


PARDNERS 


what we used to call a ‘belly-buster’ back 
home, but quite satisfyin’ for a maiden effort, 
and I reeled him in astern. 

“Your Chicago man ain’t a gamey fish. 
He come up tame and squirting sewage 
like a dissolute porpoise, while I played 
him out where he’d get the thrash of the 
propeller. 

“‘Help,’ he yells, ‘I’m a drownding.’ 

“‘Ten dollars and costs,’ says I, lettin’ him 
under again. ‘Do you know who you’re drink- 
in’ with this time, hey ? ’ 

“ I reckon the astonishment of the mob was 
equal to Heegan’s; anyhow I’m told that we 
was favoured with such quietness that my 
voice sounded four blocks, simply achin’ with 
satisfactions. Then pandemonium tore loose, 
but I was so engrosed in sweet converse I never 
heard it or noticed that the ‘ Detroit ’ had slid 
through the draw by a hair, and we was bound 
for the blue and smilin’ lake. 

“‘For God’s sake, lemme up,’ says Heegan, 
splashin’ along and lookin’ strangly. I hauls 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 141 

him in where he wouldn’t miss any of my iron- 
ies, and says : — 

“‘I just can’t do it, “ Oily” — it’s wash day. 
You’re plumb nasty with boycotts and pick- 
eting and compulsory arbitrations. I’m goin’ 
to clean you up,’ and I sozzled him under like 
a wet shirt. 

“ I drug him out again and continues : — 

“‘This is Chinamen’s work, “Oily,” but I 
lost my pride in the Bridewell, thanks to you. 
It’s tough on St. Louis to laundry you up 
stream this way, but maybe the worst of your 
heresies ’ll be purified when they get that far. 1 
You know the Chicago River runs up hill out 
of Lake Michigan through the drainage canal 
and into the St. Louis waterworks. Sure it 
does — most unnatural stream I ever see about 
direction and smells. 

“I was gettin’ a good deal of enjoyment 
and infections out of him when old man 
Badrich ran back enamelled with blood and 
pass6 tomato juice, the red in his white 
hair makin’ his top look like one of these 


142 


PARDNERS 


fancy ice-cream drinks you get at a soda 
fountain. 

“‘Here! here! you’ll kill him/ says he, so I 
hauled him aboard, drippin’ and clingy, 
wringin’ him out good and thorough — by the 
neck. He made a fine mop 

“These clippings,” continued “Bitter 
Root,” fishing into his pocket, “tell in beauti- 
ful figgers how the last seen of ‘Oily’ Heegan 
he was holystoning the deck of a sooty little 
tugboat under the admonishments and feet of 
‘Bitter Root’ Billings of Montana, and they 
state how the strikers tried to get tugs for pur- 
suit and couldn’t, and how, all day long, from 
the housetops was visible a tugboat madly 
cruisin’ about inside the outer cribs, bustin’ 
the silence with joyful blasts of victory, and 
they’ll further state that about dark she steam- 
ed up the river, tired and draggled, with a 
bony-lookin’ cowboy inhalin’ cigareets on the 
stern-bits, holding a three-foot knotted rope in 
his lap. When a delegation of strikers met her, 
inquirin’ about one D. O’Hara Heegan, it says 


Bitter Root Billings , Arbiter 143 

like this,” and Billings read laboriously as 
follows : — 

“‘Then the bronzed and lanky man arose 
with a smile of rare contentment, threw over- 
board his cigarette, and approaching the 
boiler-room hatch, called loudly: “Come out 
of that, ” and the President of the Federation of 
Fresh Water Firemen dragged himself wearily 
out into the flickering lights. He was black 
and drenched and streaked with sweat; also, he 
shone with the grease and oils of the engines, 
while the palms of his hands were covered with 
painful blisters from unwonted, intimate con- 
tact with shovels and drawbars. It was seen 
that hey winced fearfully as the cowboy twirled 
the rope end. 

44 4 44 He’s got the makin’s of a fair fireman,’ ” 
said the stranger, 44 ‘all he wants is practice.’” 

“Then, as the delegation murmured an- 
grily, he held up his hand and, in the ensuing 
silence, said : — 

44 4 44 Boys, the stride’s over. Mr. Heegan has 
arbitrated.””’ 






































V 




THE SHYNESS OF SHORTY 






































































































THE SHYNESS OF SHORTY 

Bailey smoked morosely as he scanned the 
dusty trail leading down across the “bottom” 
and away over the dry grey prairie toward the 
hazy mountains in the west. 

From his back-tilted chair on the veranda, 
the road was visible for miles, as well as the 
river trail from the south, sneaking up through 
the cottonwoods and leprous sycamores. 

He called gruffly into the silence of the 
house, and his speech held the surliness of his 
attitude 

“ Hoi Joy! Bar X outfit cornin’. Git supper. ” 

A Chinaman appeared in the door and gazed 
at the six-mule team descending the distant 
gully to the ford. 

“Jesse one man, hey? All light,” and slid 
quietly back to the kitchen. 


PARDNERS 


148 

Whatever might be said, or, rather, what- 
ever might be suspected, of Bailey’s road-house 
— for people did not run to wordy conjecture 
in this country — it was known that it boasted 
a good cook, and this atoned for a catalogue of 
shortcomings. So it waxed popular among 
the hands of the big cattle ranges near-bye. 
Those given to idle talk held that Bailey acted 
strangely at times, and rumour painted occa- 
sional black doings at the hacienda, squatting 
vulture-like above the ford, but it was nobody’s 
business, and he kept a good cook. 

Bailey did not recall the face that greeted 
him from above the three span as they swung 
in front of his corral, but the brand on their 
flanks was the Bar X, so he nodded with as 
near an approach to h€^pitality as he per- 
mitted. 

It was a large face, strong-featured and 
rugged, balanced on wide, square shoulders, 
yet some oddness of posture held the gaze of 
the other till the stranger clambered over the 
wheel to the ground. Then Bailey removed 


149 


The Shyness of Shorty 
his brier and heaved tempestuously in the 
throes of great and silent mirth. 

It was a dwarf. The head of a Titan, the 
body of a whisky barrel, rolling ludicrously on 
the tiny limbs of a bug, presented so startling 
a sight that even Hot Joy, appearing around 
the corner, cackled shrilly. His laughter rose 
to a shriek of dismay, however, as the little man 
made at him with the rush and roar of a can- 
non ball. In Bailey’s amazed eyes he seemed to 
bounce galvanically, landing on Joy’s back 
with such vicious suddenness that the breath 
fled from him in a squawk of terror; then, 
seizing his cue, he kicked and belaboured the 
prostrate Celestial in feverish silence. He de- 
sisted and rolled across the porch to Bailey. 
Staring truculently up ?t the landlord, he 
spoke for the first time. 

“Was ^ right in supposin’ that something 
amused you?” 

Bailey gasped incredulously, for the voice 
rumbled heavily an octave below his own bass. 
Either the look of the stocky catapult, as he 


150 


PARDNERS 


launched himself on the fleeing servant, or the 
invidious servility of the innkeeper, sobered the 
landlord, and he answered gravely : 

“No, sir; I reckon you’re mistaken. I ain’t 
observed anything frivolous yet. ” 

“Glad of it,” said the little man. “I don’t 
like a feller to hog a joke all by himself. Some of 
the Bar X boys took to absorbin’ humour out 
of my shape when I first went to work, but 
they’re sort of educated out of it now. I got an 
eye from one and a finger off of another; the 
last one donated a ear.” 

Bailey readily conceived this man as a bad 
antagonist, for the heavy corded neck had split 
buttons from the blue shirt, and he glimpsed a 
chest hairy, and round as a drum, while the 
brown arms showed knotty and hardened. 

“Let’s liquor,” he said, and led the way into 
the big, low room, serving as bar, dining- and 
living-room. From the rear came vicious 
clatterings and slammings of pots, mingled 
with Oriental lamentations, indicating an ach- 
ing body rather than a chastened spirit. 


151 


The Shyness of Shorty 

“Don’t see you often,” he continued, with a 
touch of implied curiosity, which grew as his 
guest, with lingering fondness, up-ended a 
glass brimful of the raw, fiery spirits. 

“No, the old man don’t lemme get away 
much. He knows that dwellin’ close to the 
ground, as I do, I pine for spiritual elevation,” 
with a melting glance at the bottles behind the 
bar, doing much to explain the size of his first 
drink. 

“Like it, do ye?” questioned Bailey indi- 
cating the shelf. 

“Well, not exactly! Booze is like air — I 
need it. It makes a new man out of me — and 
usually ends by gettin’ both me and the new 
one laid off.” 

“Didn’t hear nothing of the weddin’ over at 
Los Huecos, did ye?” 

“No! Whose weddin’?” 

“Ross Turney, the new sheriff.” 

“Ye don’t say! Him that’s been elected on 
purpose to round up the Tremper gang, hey? 
Who’s his antagonist?” 


152 


PARDNERS 


“Old man Miller’s gal. He’s celebratin’ his 
election by gettin’ spliced. I been expectin’ of 
’em across this way to-night, but I guess they 
took the Black Butte trail. You heard what he 
said, didn’t ye? Claims that inside of ninety 
days he’ll rid the county of the Trempers and 
give the reward to his wife for a bridal present. 
Five thousand dollars on ’em, you know.” 
Bailey grinned evilly and continued: “Say! 
Marsh Tremper’ll ride up to his house some 
night and make him eat his own gun in front of 
his bride, see if he don’t. Then there’ll be cause 
for an inquest and an election. ” He spoke with 
what struck the teamster as unnecessary heat. 

“ Dunno, ” said the other; “ Turney’s a brash 
young feller, I hear, but he’s game. ’Tain’t any 
of my business, though, and I don’t want none 
of his contrac’. I’m violently addicted to peace 
and quiet, I am. Guess I’ll unhitch,” and he 
toddled out into the gathering dusk to his 
mules, while the landlord peered uneasily 
down the darkening trail. 

As the saddened Joy lit candles in the front 


The Shyness of Shorty 153 

room there came the rattle of wheels without, 
and a buckboard stopped in the bar of light 
from the door. Bailey’s anxiety was replaced 
by a mask of listless surprise as the voice of 
Ross Turney called to him. 

“Hello there, Bailey! Are we in time for 
supper? If not. I’ll start an insurrection with 
that Boxer of yours. He’s got to turn out the 
snortingest supper of the season to-night. It 
isn’t every day your shack is honoured by a 
bride. Mr. Bailey, this is my wife, since ten 
o’clock a. m. ” He introduced a blushing, happy 
girl, evidently in the grasp of many emotions. 
“We’ll stay all night, I guess,” 

“Sure,” said Bailey. “I’ll show ye a room,” 
and he led them up beneath the low roof where 
an unusual cleanliness betrayed the industry of 
Joy. 

The two men returned and drank to the 
bride, Turney with the reckless lightness that 
distinguished him, Bailey sullen and watchful. 

“Got another outfit here, haven’t you?” 
questioned the bridegroom. “Who is it?” 


154 


PARDNERS 


Before answer could be made, from the 
kitchen arose a tortured howl and the smash- 
ing of dishes, mingled with stormy rumblings. 
The door burst inward, and an agonized Joy 
fled, flapping out into the night, while behind 
him rolled the caricature from Bar X. 

44 1 just stopped for a drink of water, ” boom- 
ed the dwarf, then paused at the twitching face 
of the sheriff. 

He swelled ominously, like a great pigeon, 
purple and congested with rage. Strutting to 
the new-comer, he glared insolently up into his 
smiling face. 

44 What are ye laughin’ at, ye shavetail ?” His 
hands were clenched, till his arms showed 
tense and rigid, and the cords in his neck were 
thickly swollen. 

44 Lemme in on it, I’m strong on humour. 
What in — ails ye?” he yelled, in a fury, as 
the tall young man gazed fixedly, and the 
glasses rattled at the bellow from the barreled- 
up lungs. 

64 I’m not laughing at you,” said the sheriff. 


The Shyness of Shorty 1 55 

“ Oh, ain’t ye ? ” mocked the man of peace. 
“ Well, take care that ye don’t, ye big wart, or 
I’ll trample them new clothes and browse 
around on some of your features. I’ll take ye 
apart till ye look like cut feed. Guess ye don’t 
know who I am, do ye ? I’m — ” 

“Who is this man, Ross ?” came the anxious 
voice of the bride, descending the stairs. 

The little man spun like a dancer, and, spy- 
ing the girl, blushed to the colour of a prickly 
pear, then stammered painfully, while the sweat 
stood out under the labour of his discomfort: 

“Just ‘Shorty,’ Miss,” he finally quavered. 
“Plain ‘Shorty’ of the Bar X — er — a mis- 
erable, crawlin’ worm for disturbin’ of you.” 
He rolled his eyes helplessly at Bailey, while he 
sopped with his crumpled sombrero at the 
glistening perspiration. 

“Why didn’t ye tell me?” he whispered 
ferociously at the host, and the volume of his 
query carried to Joy, hiding out in the night. 

“Mr. Shorty,” said the sheriff gravely; “let 
me introduce my wife, Mrs. Turney. ” 


156 


PARDNERS 


The bride smiled sweetly at the tremulous 
little man, who broke and fled to a high bench 
in the darkest corner, where he dangled his 
short legs in a silent ecstasy of bashfulness. 

“ I reckon I’ll have to rope that Chink, then 
blindfold and back him into the kitchen, if we 
git any supper,” said Bailey, disappearing. 

Later the Chinaman stole in to set the table, 
but he worked with hectic and fitful energy, a 
fearful eye always upon the dim bulk in the 
corner, and at a fancied move he shook with an 
ague of apprehension. Backing and sidling, he 
finally announced the meal, prepared to stam- 
pede madly at notice. 

During the supper Shorty ate ravenously of 
whatever lay to his hand, but asked no favours. 
The agony of his shyness paralysed his huge 
vocal muscles till speech became a labour quite 
impossible. 

To a pleasant remark of the bride he re- 
sponded, but no sound issued, then breathing 
heavily into his larynx, the reply roared upon 
them like a burst of thunder, seriously threat- 


157 


The Shyness of Shorty 
ening the gravity of the meal. He retired ab- 
ruptly into moist and self-conscious silence, 
fearful of feasting his eyes on this disturbing 
loveliness. 

As soon as compatible with decency, he 
slipped back to his bunk in the shed behind, 
and lay staring into the darkness, picturing the 
amazing occurrences of the evening. At the 
memory of her level glances he fell a-tremble 
and sighed ecstatically, prickling with a new* 
strange emotion. He lay till far into the night, 
wakeful and absorbed. He was able to grasp 
the fact but dimly that all this dazzling per- 
fection was for one man. Were it not manifestly 
impossible he supposed other men in other 
lands knew other ladies as beautiful, and it fur- 
thermore grew upon him blackly, in the thick 
gloom, that in all this world of womanly sweet- 
ness and beauty, no modicum of it was for the 
misshapen dwarf of the Bar X outfit. All his 
life he had fought furiously to uphold the empty 
shell of his dignity in the eyes of his comrades, 
yet always morbidly conscious of the differ* 


PARDNERS 


158 

ence in his "body. Whisky had been his solace, 
lais sweetheart. It changed him, raised and be- 
atified him into the likeness of other men, and 
now, as he pondered, he was aware of a con- 
suming thirst engendered by the heat of his earl- 
ier emotions. Undoubtedly it must be quenched. 

He rose and stole quietly out into the big 
front room. Perhaps the years of free life in the 
open had bred a suspicion of walls, perhaps he 
felt his conduct w T ould not brook discovery, 
perhaps habit, prompted him to take the two 
heavy Colts from their holsters and thrust them 
inside his trousers band. 

He slipped across the room, silent and cav- 
ern-like, its blackness broken by the window 
squares of starry sky, till he felt the paucity 
of glassware behind the bar. 

“ Here’s to Her,” It burned delightfully. 

“ Here’s to the groom.” It tingled more 
alluringly. 

“ I’ll drink what I can, and get back to the 
bunk before it works,” he thought, and the 
darkness veiled the measure of his potations. 


The Shyness of Shorty " — ^ 159 

He started at a noise on the stairway. His 
senses not yet dulled, detected a stealthy tread. 
Not the careless step of a man unafraid, but 
the cautious rustle and halt of a marauder. 
Every nerve bristled to keenest alertness as the 
faint occasional sounds approached, passed the 
open end of the bar where he crouched, leading 
on to the window. Then a match flared, and 
the darkness rushed out as a candle wick 
sputtered. 

Shorty stretched on tiptoe, brought his eye to 
the level of the bar, and gazed upon the hor- 
rent head of Bailey. He sighed thankfully, but 
watched with interest his strange behaviour. 

Bailey moved the light across the window 
from left to right three times, paused, then wig- 
wagged some code out into the night. 

“ He’s signalling, ” mused Shorty. “ Hope he 
gets through quick. I’m getting full.” The 
fumes of the liquor were beating at his senses, 
and he knew that soon he would move with 
difficulty. 

The man, however, showed no intention of 


PARDNERS 


160 

leaving, for, his signals completed, he blew out 
the light, first listening for any sound from 
above, then his figure loomed black and 
immobile against the dim starlight of the 
window. 

“Oh, Lord! I got to set down,” and the 
watcher squatted upon the floor, bracing 
against the wall. His dulling perceptions were 
sufficiently acute to detect shuffling footsteps on 
the porch and the cautious unbarring of the 
door. 

“ Gettin’ late for visitors,” he thought, as he 
entered a blissful doze. “When they’re abed, 
I’ll turn in.” 

It seemed much later that a shot startled 
him. To his dizzy hearing came the sound of 
curses overhead, the stamp and shift of feet, 
the crashing fall of struggling men, and, what 
brought him unsteadily to his legs, the agonized 
scream of a woman. It echoed through the 
house, chilling him, and dwindled to an aching 
moan. 

Something was wrong, he knew that, but it 


The Shyness of Shorty 161 

was hard to tell just what. He must think. What 
hard work it was to think, too; he’d never 
noticed before what a laborious process it was. 
Probably that sheriff had got into trouble; he 
was a fresh guy, anyhow; and he’d laughed 
when he first saw Shorty. That settled it. He 
could get out of it himself. Evidently it was 
nothing serious, for there was no more dis- 
turbance above, only confused murmurings. 
Then a light showed in the stairs, and again 
the shuffling of feet came, as four strange men 
descended. They were lighted by the sardonic 
Bailey, and they dragged a sixth between them, 
bound and helpless. It was the sheriff. 

Now, what had he been doing to get into 
such a fix? 

The prisoner stood against the wall, white 
and defiant. He strained at his bonds silently, 
while his captors watched his futile struggles. 
There was something terrible and menacing in 
the quietness with which they gloated — a 
suggestion of some horror to come. At last he 
desisted, and burst forth. 


162 


PARDNERS 


“You’ve got me all right. You did this* 
Bailey, you — traitor. ” 

“He’s never been a traitor, as far as we 
know,” sneered one of the four. “In fact, I 
might say he’s been strictly on the square with 
us.” 

“I didn’t think you made war on women, 
either. Marsh Trempei, but it seems you’re 
everything from a dog-thief down. Why 
couldn’t you fight me alone, in the daylight, 
like a man ?” 

“You don’t wait till a rattler’s coiled be- 
fore you stamp his head off,” said the former 
speaker. “It’s either you or us, and I reckon 
it’s you. ” 

So these were the Tremper boys, eh? The 
worst desperadoes in the Southwest; and Bailey 
was their ally. The watcher eyed them, mildly 
curious, and it seemed to him that they were as 
bad a quartette as rumour had painted — bad, 
even, for this country of bad men. The sheriff 
was a fool for getting mixed up with such peo- 
ple. Shorty knew enough to mind his own 


The Shyness of Shorty 163 

business, anyway, if others didn’t. He was a 
peaceful man, and didn’t intend to get mixed 
up with outlaws. His mellow meditations were 
interrupted by the hoarse speech of the sheriff, 
who had broken down into his rage again, 
and struggled madly while words ran from 
him. 

“Let me go! — you, let me free. I want to 
5ght the coward that struck my wife. You’ve 
killed her. Who was it ? Let me get at him. ” 

Shorty stiffened as though a douche of ice* 
water had struck him. “Killed her! Struck his 
wife!” My God! Not that sweet creature of his 
dreams who had talked and smiled at him 
without noting his deformity — 

An awful anger rose in him and he moved 
out into the light. 

“Han’ sup!” 

Whatever of weakness may have dragged at 
his legs, none sounded in the great bellowing 
command that flooded the room. At the com- 
pelling volume of the sound every man whirled 
and eight empty hands shot skyward. Their 


164 


PARDNERS 


startled eyes beheld a man's squat body weav- 
ing uncertainly on the limbs of an insect, while 
in each hand shone a blue-black Colt that 
waved and circled in maddening, erratic orbits. 

At the command. Marsh Tremper’s mind 
had leaped to the fact that behind him was one 
man; one against five, and he took a gambler’s 
chance. 

As he whirled, he drew and fired. None but 
the dwarf of Bar X could have lived, for he wa* 
the deadliest hip shot in the territory. His bul 
let crashed into the wall, a hand’s breadth over 
Shorty’s “cow-lick.” It was a clean heart shot; 
the practised whirl and flip of the finished gun 
fighter; but the roar of his explosion was echo- 
ed by another, and the elder Tremper spun un- 
steadily against the table with a broken 
shoulder. 

“Too high,” moaned the big voice. “ — 
the liquor.” 

He swayed drunkenly, but at the slightest 
shift of his quarry, the aimless wanderings of a 
black muzzle stopped on the spot and the body 


The Shyness of Shorty 165 

behind the guns was congested with deadly 
menace. 

“Face the wall,” he cried. “ Quick! Keep 
’em up higher!” They sullenly obeyed; their 
wounded leader reaching with his uninjured 
member. 

To the complacent Shorty, it seemed that 
things were working nicely, though he was dis- 
turbingly conscious of his alcoholic lack of 
balance, and tortured by the fear that he might 
suddenly lose the iron grip of his faculties. 

Then, for the second time that night, from 
the stairs came the voice that threw him into 
the dreadful confusion of his modesty. 

“O Ross!” it cried, “I’ve brought your 
gun,” and there on the steps, dishevelled, pal- 
lid and quivering, was the bride, and grasped 
in one trembling hand was her husband’s 
weapon. 

“Ah — h!” sighed Shorty, seraphically, as 
the vision beat in upon his misty conceptions. 
“ She ain't hurt ! ” 

In his mind there was no room for desper- 


166 


PARDNERS 


adoes contemporaneously with Her. Then he 
became conscious of the lady’s raiment, and 
his brown cheeks flamed brick-red, while he 
dropped his eyes. In his shrinking, grovelling 
modesty, he made for his dark corner. 

One of those at bay, familiar with this strange 
abashment, seized the moment, but at his mo- 
tion the sheriff screamed: “Look out!” 

The quick danger in the cry brought back 
with a surge the men against the wall and 
Shorty swung instantly, firing at the outstretch- 
ed hand of Bailey as it reached for Tremper’s 
weapon. 

The landlord straightened, gazing affright- 
edly at his finger tips. 

“Too low!” and Shorty’s voice held aching 
tears. “ I’ll never touch another drop ; it’s plumb 
ruined my aim.” 

“Cut these strings, girlie,” said the sheriff, 
as the little man’s gaze again wavered, threat- 
ening to leave his prisoners. 

“Quick. He’s blushing again.” 

When they were manacled, Shorty stood in 


167 


The Shyness of Shorty 
moist exudation, trembling and speechless, 
under the incoherent thanks of the bride and 
the silent admiration of her handsome hus- 
band. She fluttered about him in a tremor of 
anxiety, lest he be wounded, caressing him 
here and there with solicitous pats till he felt 
his shamed and happy spirit would surely burst 
from its misshapen prison. 

“You’ve made a good thing to-night,” said 
Turney, clapping him heartily on his massive 
back. “You get the five thousand all right. We 
were going to Mexico City on that for a bridal 
trip when I rounded up the gang, but I’ll see 
you get every cent of it, old man. If it wasn’t 
for you I’d have been a heap farther south than 
that by now. ” 

The open camaraderie and good-fellowship 
that rang in the man’s voice affected Shorty 
strangely, accustomed as he was to the veiled 
contempt or open compassion of his fellows. 
Here was one who recognized him as a man, 
an equal. 

He spread his lips, but the big voice squeak- 


168 


PARDNERS 


ed dismally, then, inflating deeply, he spoke so 
that the prisoners chained in the corral outside 
heard him plainly. 

“I’d rather she took it anyhow,” blushing 
violently. 

“No, no,” they cried. “It’s yours.” 

“Well, then, half of it” — and for once 
Shorty betrayed the strength of Gibraltar, 
even in the face of the lady, and so it stood. 

As the dawn spread over the dusty prairie, 
tipping the westward mountains with silver 
caps, and sucking the mist out of the cotton- 
wood bottoms, he bade them adieu. 

“No, I got to get back to the Bar X, or the 
old man’ll swear I been drinking again, and I 
don’t want to dissipate no wrong impressions 
around.” He winked gravely. Then, as the 
sheriff and his surly prisoners drove off, he 
called : 

“Mr. Turney, take good care of them 
Trempers. I think a heap of ’em, for, outside of 
your wife, they’re the only ones in this outfit 
that didn’t laugh at me.” 


THE TEST 


1 






















































































THE TEST 


Pierre “Feroce” showed disapproval in his 
every attitude as plainly as disgust peered from 
the seams in his dark face; it lurked in his 
scowl and in the curl of his long rawhide that 
bit among the sled dogs. So at least thought 
Willard, as he clung to the swinging sledge. 

They were skirting the coast, keeping to the 
glare ice, wind-swept and clean, that lay out- 
side the jumbled shore pack. The team ran 
silently in the free gait of the grey wolf, romp- 
ing in harness from pure joy of motion and the 
intoxication of perfect life, making the sled 
runners whine like the song of a cutlass. 

This route is dangerous, of course, from 
hidden cracks in the floes, and most travellers 
hug the bluffs, but he who rides with Pierre 
“Feroce” takes chances. It was this that had 


172 PARDNERS 

won him the name of “Wild” Pierre — the 
most reckless, tireless man of the trails, a 
scoffer at peril, bolting through danger with 
rush and frenzy, overcoming sheerly by vigour 
those obstacles which destroy strong men in 
the North. 

The power that pulsed within him gleamed 
from his eyes, rang in his song, showed in the 
aggressive thrust of his sensual face. 

This particular morning, however, Pierre’s 
distemper had crystallized into a great con- 
tempt for his companion. Of all trials, the most 
detestable is to hit the trail with half a man, 
a pale, anemic weakling like this stranger. 

Though modest in the extent of his learning, 
Pierre gloated in a freedom of speech, the 
which no man dared deny him. He turned to 
eye his companion cynically for a second time, 
and contempt was patent in his gaze. Willard 
appeared slender and pallid in his furs, though 
his clear-cut features spoke a certain strength 
and much refinement. 

“Bah! I t’ink you dam poor feller,” he said 


The Test 173 

finally. “ ’Ow you ’goin’ stan’ thees trip, eh ? 
She’s need beeg mans, not leetle runt like you.” 

Amusement at this frankness glimmered in 
Willard’s eyes. 

“You’re like all ignorant people. You think 
in order to stand hardship a man should be 
able to toss a sack of flour in his teeth or juggle 
a cask of salt-horse.” 

“Sure t’ing,” grinned Pierre. “That’s right. 
Look at me. Mebbe you hear ’bout Pierre 
‘ Feroce ’ sometime, eh ? ” 

“Oh, yes; everybody knows you; knows 
you’re a big bully. I’ve seen you drink a quart 
of this wood alcohol they call whisky up here, 
and then jump the bar from a stand, but you’re 
all animal — you haven’t the refinement and 
the culture that makes real strength. It’s the 
mind that makes us stand punishment.” 

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Canadian. 
“W’at a fonny talk. She’ll take the heducate 
man for stan’ the col’, eh? Mon Dieu!” He 
roared again till the sled dogs turned fearful 
glances backward and bushy tails drooped un« 


PARDNERS 


174 

der the weight of their fright. Great noise came 
oftenest with great rage from Pierre, and they 
had too frequently felt the both to forget. 

“Yes, you haven’t the mentality. Some- 
time you’ll use up your physical resources and 
go to pieces like a burned wick.” 

Pierre was greatly amused. His yellow teeth 
shone, and he gave vent to violent mirth as, 
following the thought, he pictured a naked 
mind wandering over the hills with the quick- 
silver at sixty degrees. 

“ Did you ever see a six-day race ? Of course 
not; you barbarians haven’t sunk to the level 
of our dissolute East, where we joy in Roman 
spectacles, but if you had you’d see it’s will 
that wins; it’s the man that eats his soul by 
inches. The educated soldier stands the cam- 
paign best. You run too much to muscle — 
you’re not balanced.” 

“I t’ink mebbe you’ll ’ave chance for show 
’im, thees stout will of yours. She’s goin’ be 
long % mush ’ troo the mountains, plentee snow, 
plentee cold.” 


The Test 175 

Although Pierre’s ridicule was galling, Wil- 
lard felt the charm of the morning too strongly 
to admit of anger or to argue his pet theory. 

The sun, brilliant and cold, lent a paradoxi- 
cal cheerfulness to the desolation, and, though 
never a sign of life broke the stillness around 
them, the beauty of the scintillant, gleaming 
mountains, distinct as cameos, that guarded 
the bay, appealed to him with the strange at- 
traction of the Arctics ; that attraction that calls 
and calls insistently, till men forsake God’s 
country for its mystery. 

He breathed the biting air cleaned by 
leagues of lifeless barrens and voids of crack- 
ling frost till he ached with the exhilaration 
of a perfect morning on the Circle. 

Also before him undulated the grandest 
string of dogs the Coast had known. Seven 
there were, tall and grey, with tails like plumes, 
whom none but Pierre could lay hand upon, 
fierce and fearless as their master. He drove 
with the killing cruelty of a stampeder, and 
they loved him. 


176 


PARDNERS 


“You say you have grub cached at the old 
Indian hut on the Good Hope?” questioned 
Willard. 

“Sure! Five poun’ bacon, leetle flour and 
rice. I cache one gum-boot too, ha! Good thing 
for make fire queeck, eh ?” 

“You bet; an old rubber boot comes handy 
when it’s too cold to make shavings.” 

Leaving the coast, they ascended a deep and 
tortuous river where the snow lay thick and 
soft. One man on snow-shoes broke trail for 
the dogs till they reached the foothills. It was 
hard work, but infinitely preferable to that 
which followed, for now they came into a dan- 
gerous stretch of overflows. The stream, froz- 
en to its bed, clogged the passage of the spring 
water beneath, forcing it up through cracks 
till it spread over the solid ice, forming pools 
and sheets covered with treacherous ice-skins. 
Wet feet are fatal to man and beast, and they 
made laborious detours, wallowing trails 
through tangled willows waist deep in the 
snow smother, or clinging precariously to the 


The Test 177 

overhanging bluffs. As they reached the river’s 
source the sky blackened suddenly, and great 
clouds of snow rushed over the bleak hills, 
boiling down into the valley with a furious 
draught. They flung up their flimsy tent, only 
to have it flattened by the force of the gale that 
cut like well-honed steel. Frozen spots leaped 
out white on their faces, while their hands 
stiffened ere they could fasten the guy strings. 

Finally, having lashed the tent bottom to the 
protruding willow tops, by grace of heavy lift- 
ing they strained their flapping shelter up suffi- 
ciently to crawl within. 

“By Gar! She’s blow hup ver’ queeck,” 
yelled Pierre, as he set the ten-pound sheet- 
iron stove, its pipe swaying drunkenly with the 
heaving tent. 

“Good t’ing she hit us in the brush.” He 
spoke as calmly as though danger was distant, 
and a moment later the little box was roaring 
with its oil-soaked kindlings. 

“Will this stove bum green willow tops?” 
cried Willard. 


178 


PARDNERS 


“Sure! She’s good stove. She’ll burn hicicles 
eef you get ’im start one times. See ’im get red ?” 

They rubbed the stiff spots from their cheeks, 
then, seizing the axe, Willard crawled forth 
into the storm and dug at the base of the gnarl- 
ed bushes. Occasionally a shrub assumed the 
proportions of a man’s wrist — but rarely. 
Gathering an armful, he bore them inside, and 
twisting the tips into withes, he fed the fire. 
The frozen twigs sizzled and snapped, threat- 
ening to fail utterly, but with much blowing 
he sustained a blaze sufficient to melt a pot 
of snow. Boiling was out of the question, but 
the tea leaves became soaked and the bacon 
cauterized. 

Pierre freed and fed the dogs. Each gulped 
its dried salmon, and, curling in the lee of the 
tent, was quickly drifted over. Next he cut 
blocks from the solid bottom snow and built a 
barricade to windward. Then he accumulated 
a mow of willow tops without the tent-fly. All 
the time the wind drew down the valley like the 
breath of a giant bellows. 


The Test 179 

“ Supper,” shouted Willard, and as Pierre 
crawled into the candle-light he found him 
squatted, fur-bundled, over the stove, which 
settled steadily into the snow, melting its way 
downward toward a firmer foundation. 

The heat was insufficient to thaw the frozen 
sweat in his clothes; his eyes were bleary and 
wet from smoke, and his nose needed contin- 
uous blowing, but he spoke pleasantly, a fact 
which Pierre noted with approval. 

“We’ll need a habeas corpus for this stove 
if you don’t get something to hold her up, and 
I might state, if it’s worthy of mention, that 
your nose is frozen again.” 

Pierre brought an armful of stones from the 
creek edge, distributing them beneath the 
stove on a bed of twisted willows; then swal- 
lowing their scanty, half-cooked food, they 
crawled, shivering, into the deerskin sleeping- 
bags, that animal heat might dry their clammy 
garments. 

Four days the wind roared and the ice filing* 
poured over their shelter while they huddle^ 


180 


PARDNERS 


beneath. When one travels on rations delay is 
dangerous. Each morning, dragging themselves 
out into the maelstrom, they took sticks and 
poked into the drifts for dogs. Each animal as 
found was exhumed, given a fish, and became 
straightway reburied in the whirling white 
that seethed down from the mountains. 

On the fifth, without warning, the storm 
died, and the air stilled to a perfect silence. 

“These dog bad froze,” said Pierre, swear- 
ing earnestly as he harnessed. “I don’ like eet 
much. They goin’ play hout I’m ’fraid.” He 
knelt and chewed from between their toes the 
ice pellets that had accumulated. A malamoot 
is hard pressed to let his feet mass, and this 
added to the men’s uneasiness. 

As they mounted the great divide, moun- 
tains rolled away on every hand, barren, deso- 
late, marble-white; always the whiteness; al- 
ways the listening silence that oppressed like a 
weight. Myriads of creek valleys radiated be- 
low in a bewildering maze of twisting seams. 

“Those are the Ass’s Ears, I suppose,” said 


The Test 181 

Willard, gazing at two great fangs that bit 
deep into the sky-line. “Is it true that no man 
has ever reached them ?” 

“Yes. The hinjun say that’s w’ere hall the 
storm come from, biccause w’en the win’ blow 
troo the Ass’s Ear, look out! Somebody goin’ 
ketch ’ell.” 

Dogs’ feet wear quickly after freezing, for 
crusted snow cuts like a knife. Spots of blood 
showed in their tracks, growing more plentiful 
till every print was a crimson stain. They 
limped pitifully on their raw pads, and oc- 
casionally one whined. At every stop they 
sank in track, licking their lacerated paws, 
rising only at the cost of much whipping. 

On the second night, faint and starved, 
they reached the hut. Digging away the drifts, 
they crawled inside to find it half full of snow 
— snow which had sifted through the crevices. 
Pierre groped among the shadows and swore 
excitedly. 

“What’s up ?” said Willard. 

Vocal effort of the simplest is exhausting 


182 


PARDNERS 


when spent with hunger, and these were the 
first words he had spoken for hours. 

“By Gar! she’s gone. Somebody stole my 
grub!” 

Willard felt a terrible sinking, and his stom- 
ach cried for food. 

“How far is it to the Crooked River Road 
House?” 

“One long day drive — forty mile.” 

“We must make it to-morrow or go hungry, 
eh ? Well this isn’t the first dog fish I ever ate.” 
Both men gnawed a mouldy dried salmon from 
their precious store. 

As Willard removed his footgear he groaned. 

“ W’at’s the mattaire ?” 

“ I froze my foot two days ago — snow-shoe 
strap too tight.” He exhibited a heel, from 
which, in removing his inner sock, the flesh 
and skin had come away. 

“That’s all right,” grinned Pierre. “You 
got the beeg will lef’ yet. It take the heducate 
man for stan’ the col’, you know.” 

Willard gritted his teeth. 


183 


The Test 

They awoke to the whine of a grey wind- 
storm that swept the cutting snow in swirling 
clouds and made travel a madness. The next 
day was worse. 

Two days of hunger weigh heavy when the 
cold weakens, and they grew gaunt and fell 
away in their features. 

“I’m glad we’ve got another feed for the 
dogs,” remarked Willard. “We can’t let them 
run hungry, even if we do.” 

“I t’ink she’s be hall right to-mor’,” ven- 
tured Pierre. “Thees ain’t snow — jus’ win’; 
bimeby all blow hout. Sacre! I’ll can eat ’nufF 
for ’ole harrny.” 

For days both men had been cold, and the 
sensation of complete warmth had come to 
seem strange and unreal, while their faces 
cracked where the spots had been. 

Willard felt himself on the verge of collapse. 
He recalled his words about strong men, gaz- 
ing the while at Pierre. The Canadian evinced 
suffering only in the haggard droop of eye and 
mouth ; otherwise he looked strong and dogged. 


184 PARDNERS 

Willard felt his own features had shrunk to 
a mask of loose- jawed suffering, and he set 
his mental sinews, muttering to himself. 

He was dizzy and faint as he stretched 
himself in the still morning air upon waking, 
and hobbled painfully, but as his companion 
emerged from the darkened shelter into the 
crystalline brightness he forgot his own mis- 
ery at sight of him. The big man reeled 
as though struck when the dazzle from the 
hills reached him, and he moaned, shielding 
his sight. Snow-blindness had found him in 
a night. 

Slowly they plodded out of the valley, for 
hunger gnawed acutely, and they left a trail 
of blood tracks from the dogs. It took the com- 
bined efforts of both men to lash them to foot 
after each pause. Thus progress was slow and 
fraught with agony. 

As they rose near the pass, miles of Arctic 
wastes bared themselves. All about towered 
bald domes, while everywhere stretched the 
monotonous white, the endless snow unbroken 


The Test 185 

by tree or shrub, pallid and menacing, mad- 
dening to the eye. 

“Thank God, the worst’s over,” sighed 
Willard, flinging himself onto the sled. “ We’ll 
make it to the summit next time; then she’s 
down hill all the way to the road house.” 

Pierre said nothing. 

Away to the northward glimmered the Ass’s 
Ears, and as the speaker eyed them carelessly 
he noted gauzy shreds and streamers veiling 
their tops. The phenomena interested him, 
for he knew that here must be wind — wind, 
the terror of the bleak tundra; the hopeless, 
merciless master of the barrens ! However, the 
distant range beneath the twin peaks showed 
clear-cut and distinct against the sky, and he 
did not mention the occurrence to the guide, 
although he recalled the words of the Indians : 
“Beware of the wind through the Ass’s Ears.” 

Again they laboured up the steep slope, 
wallowing in the sliding snow, straining silently 
at the load; again they threw themselves, ex- 
hausted, upon it. Now, as he eyed the pan- 


186 


PARDNERS 


orama below, it seemed to have suffered a 
subtle change, indefinable and odd. Although 
but a few minutes had elapsed, the coast moun- 
tains no longer loomed clear against the hori- 
zon, and his visual range appeared foreshort- 
ened, as though the utter distances had length- 
ened, bringing closer the edge of things. The 
twin peaks seemed endlessly distant and hazy, 
while the air had thickened as though con- 
gested with possibilities, lending a remoteness 
to the landscape. 

“If it blows up on us here, we’re gone,” he 
thought, “for it’s miles to shelter, and we’re 
right in the saddle of the hills.” 

Pierre, half blinded as he was, arose un- 
easily and cast the air like a wild beast, his 
great head thrown back, his nostrils quivering. 

“I smell the win’,” he cried. “Mon Dieu! 
She’s goin’ blow!” 

Avolatile pennant floated out fromanear-bye 
peak, hanging about its crest like faint smoke. 
Then along the brow of the pass writhed a 
wisp of drifting, twisting flakelets, idling hither 


The Test 187 

and yon, astatic and aimless, settling in a hol- 
low. They sensed a thrill and rustle to the air, 
though never a breath had touched them; 
then, as they mounted higher, a draught 
fanned them, icy as interstellar space. The 
view from the summit was grotesquely dis- 
torted, and glancing upward they found the 
guardian peaks had gone a-smoke with clouds 
of snow that whirled confusedly, while an in- 
creasing breath sucked over the summit, 
stronger each second. Dry snow began to 
rustle slothfully about their feet. So swiftly 
were the changes wrought, that before the 
mind had grasped their import the storm w T a s 
on them, roaring down from every side, 
swooping out of the boiling sky, a raging blast 
from the voids of sunless space. 

Pierre’s shouts as he slashed at the sled lash- 
ings were snatched from his lips in scattered 
scraps. He dragged forth the whipping tent 
and threw himself upon it with the sleeping- 
bags. Having cut loose the dogs, Willard 
crawled within his sack and they drew the 


188 


PARDNERS 


flapping canvas over them. The air was twi- 
light and heavy with efflorescent granules that 
hurtled past in a drone. 

They removed their outer garments that the 
fur might fold closer against them, and lay 
exposed to the full hate of the gale. They hoped 
to be drifted over, but no snow could lodge 
in this hurricane, and it sifted past, dry and 
sharp, eddying out a bare place wherein they 
lay. Thus the wind drove the chill to their 
bones bitterly. 

An unnourished human body responds but 
weakly, so, vitiated by their fast and labours, 
their suffering smote them with tenfold cruelty. 

All night the north wind shouted, and, as 
the next day waned with its violence undi- 
minished, the frost crept in upon them till 
they rolled and tossed shivering. Twice they 
essayed to crawl out, but were driven back to 
cower for endless, hopeless hours. 

It is in such black, aimless times that 
thought becomes distorted. Willard felt his 
mind wandering through bleak dreams and 


189 


The Test 

tortured fancies, always to find himself harp- 
ing on his early argument with Pierre: “It’s 
the mind that counts.” Later he roused to the 
fact that his knees, where they pressed against 
the bag, were frozen; also his feet were numb 
and senseless. In his acquired consciousness 
he knew that along the course of his previous 
mental vagary lay madness, and the need of 
action bore upon him imperatively. 

He shouted to his mate, but “Wild” Pierre 
seemed strangely apathetic. 

“We’ve got to run for it at daylight. We’re 
freezing. Here ! Hold on ! What are you doing ? 
Wait for daylight!” Pierre had scrambled 
stiffly out of his cover and his gabblings reach- 
ed Willard. He raised a clenched fist into the 
darkness of the streaming night, cursing horri- 
bly with words that appalled the other. 

“Man! man! don’t curse your God. This is 
bad enough as it is. Cover up. Quick!” 

Although apparently unmindful of his pres- 
ence, the other crawled back muttering. 

As the dim morning greyed the smother 


190 


PARDNERS 


they rose and fought their way downward 
toward the valley. Long since they had lost 
their griping hunger, and now held only an 
apathetic indifference to food, with a cringing 
dread of the cold and a stubborn sense of their 
extreme necessity. 

They fell many times, but gradually drew 
themselves more under control, the exercise 
suscitating them, as they staggered down- 
ward, blinded and buffeted, their only hope 
the road-house. 

Willard marvelled dully at the change in 
Pierre. His face had shrivelled to blackened 
freezes stretched upon a bony substructure, 
and lighted by feverish, glittering, black, black 
eyes. It seemed to him that his own lagging 
body had long since failed, and that his aching, 
naked soul wandered stiffly through the endless 
day. As night approached Pierre stopped fre- 
quently, propping himself with legs far apart; 
sometimes he laughed. Invariably this horrible 
sound shocked Willard into a keener sense of 
the surroundings, and it grew to irritate him* 


The Test 191 

for the Frenchman’s mental wanderings in- 
creased with the darkness. What made him 
rouse one with his awful laughter ? These 
spells of walking insensibility were pleasanter 
far. At last the big man fell. To Willard’s 
mechanical endeavours to help he spoke sleep- 
ily, but with the sanity of a man under great 
stress. 

“ Dat no good. I’m goin’ freeze right ’ere — 
freeze stiff as ’ell. Au revoir.” 

“ Get up!” Willard kicked him weakly, then 
sat upon the prostrate man as his own faculties 
went wandering. 

Eventually he roused, and digging into the 
snow buried the other, first covering his face 
with the ample parka hood. Then he struck 
down the valley. In one lucid spell he found he 
had followed a sled trail, which was blown 
clear and distinct by the wind that had now 
almost died away. 

Occasionally his mind grew clear, and his 
pains beat in upon him till he grew furious at 
the life in him which refused to end, which 


PARDNERS 


192 

forced him ever through this gauntlet of mis- 
ery. More often he was conscious only of a 
vague and terrible extremity outside of him~ 
self that goaded him forever forward. Anon 
he strained to recollect his destination. His 
features had set in an implacable grimace of 
physical torture — like a runner in the fury oi 
a finish — till the frost hardened them so. At 
times he fell heavily, face downward, and at 
length upon the trail, lying so till that omni- 
present coercion that had frozen in his brain 
drove him forward. 

He heard his own voice maundering through 
Vfeless lips like that of a stranger: “The man 
that can eat his soul will win, Pierre.” 

Sometimes he cried like a child and slaver 
ran from his open mouth, freezing at his breast. 
One of his hands was going dead. He stripped 
the left mitten off and drew it laboriously over 
the right. One he would save at least, even 
though he lost the other. He looked at the bare 
member dully, and he could not tell that the 
cold had eased till the bitterness was nearly 


The Test 193 

out of the air. He laboured with the fitful 
spurts of a machine run down. 

Ten men and many dogs lay together in 
the Crooked River Road House through the 
storm. At late bedtime of the last night came 
a scratching on the door. 

‘‘Somebody’s left a dog outside,” said & 
teamster, and rose to let him in. He opened 
the door only to retreat affrightedly. 

“My God!” he said. “My God!” and the 
miners crowded forward. 

A figure tottered over the portal, swaying 
drunkenly. They shuddered at the sight of 
its face as it crossed toward the fire. It did not 
walk; it shuffled, haltingly, with flexed knees 
and hanging shoulders, the strides measur- 
ing inches only — a grisly burlesque upon 
senility. 

Pausing in the circle, it mumbled thickly, 
with great effort, as though gleaning words 
from infinite distance: 

“ Wild Pierre — frozen — buried — in — 


194 


PARDNERS 


snow — hurry!” Then he straightened and 
spoke strongly, his voice flooding the room: 

“It’s the mind, Pierre. Ha! ha! ha! The 
mind.” 

He cackled hideously, and plunged forward 
into a miner’s arms. 

It w r as many days before his delirium broke. 
Gradually he felt the pressure of many band- 
ages upon him, and the hunger of convales- 
cence. As he lay in his bunk the past came to 
him hazy and horrible; then the hum of voices, 
one loud, insistent, and familiar. 

Pie turned weakly, to behold Pierre propped 
in a chair by the stove, frost-scarred and pale, 
but aggressive even in recuperation. Pie gestic- 
ulated fiercely with a bandaged hand, hot in 
controversy with some big-limbed, bearded 
strangers. 

“Bah! You fellers no good — too beeg in the 
ches’, too leetle in the forehead, She’ll tak’ the 
heducate mans for stan’ the ’ardsheep — lak* 
me an’ Meestaire Weelard. ” 


NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE 



NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE 

Big George was drinking, and the activities of 
the little Arctic mining camp were paralysed. 
Events invariably ceased their progress and 
marked time when George became excessive, 
and now nothing of public consequence stirred 
except the quicksilver, which was retiring 
fearfully into its bulb at the song of the wind 
which came racing over the lonesome, bitter, 
northward waste of tundra. 

He held the centre of the floor at the North- 
ern Club, and proclaimed his modest virtues in 
a voice as pleasant as the cough of a bull- 
walrus. 

“Yes, me! Little Georgie! I did it. I’ve 
licked ’em all from Herschel Island to Dutch 
Harbour, big uns and little uns. When they 
didn’t suit I made ’em over. I’m the boss car- 


PARDNERS 


198 

penter of the Arctic and 1 own this camp; don’t 
I, Slim? Hey? Answer me!” he roared at the 
emaciated bearer of the title, whose attention 
seemed wandering from the inventory of 
George’s startling traits toward a card game. 

“Sure ye do,” nervously smiled Slim, 
frightened out of a heart-solo as he returned to 
his surroundings. 

“Well, then, listen to what I’m saying. I’m 
the big chief of the village, and when I’m stim- 
ulated and happy them fellers I don’t like 
hides out and lets me and Nature operate 
things. Ain’t that right ?” He glared inquiring- 
ly at his friends. 

Red, the proprietor, explained over the bar 
in a whisper to Captain, the new man from 
Dawson: “That’s Big George, the whaler. 
He’s a sqilaw-man and sort of a bully - — see ? 
When he’s sober he’s on the level strickly, an’ 
we all likes him fine, but when he gets to 
fightin’ the pain-killer, he ain’t altogether a 
gentleman. Will he fight? Oh! Will he fight? 
Say! he’s there with chimes, he is! Why, Doc 


North of Fifty-three 199 

Miller’s made a grub-stake rebuildin’ fellers 
that’s had a lingerin’ doubt cached away about 
that, an’ now when he gets the booze up his 
nose them patched-up guys oozes away an’ hib- 
ernates till the gas dies out in him. Afterwards 
he’s sore on himself an’ apologizes to everybody. 
Don’t get into no trouble with him, cause he’s 
two checks past the limit. They don’t make 
’em as bad as him any more. He busted 
the mould.” 

George turned, and spying the new-comer, 
approached, eyeing him with critical dis- 
favour. 

Captain saw a bear-like figure, clad cap-a- 
pie in native fashion. Reindeer pants, with the 
hair inside, clothed legs like rock pillars, while 
out of the loose squirrel parka a corded neck 
rose, brown and strong, above which darkly 
gleamed a rugged face seamed and scarred by 
the hate of Arctic winters. He had kicked of! 
his deer-skin socks, and stood bare-footed on 
the cold and draughty floor, while the poison 
he had imbibed showed only in his heated face, 


£00 


PARDNERS 


Silently he extended a cracked and hardened 
hand, which closed like the armoured claw of a 
crustacean and tightened on the crunching 
fingers of the other. Captain’s expression re- 
mained unchanged and, gradually slackening 
his grip, the sailor roughly inquired: 

“ Where’ d you come from ? ” 

“Just got in from Dawson yesterday,” po^ 
litely responded the stranger. 

“Well! what’re you goin’ to do now you’re 
here?” he demanded. 

“ Stake some claims and go to prospecting, I 
guess. You see, I w T anted to get in early before 
the rush next spring. ” 

“Oh! I ’spose you’re going to jump some of 
our ground, hey? Well, you ain’t! We don’t 
want no claim jumpers here,” disagreeably 
continued the seaman; “we won’t stand for it. 
This is my camp — see ? I own it, and these is 
my little children. ” Then, as the other refused 
to debate with him, he resumed, groping for a 
new ground of attack. 

“Say! I’ll bet you’re one of them eddicated 


North of Fifty -three 201 

dudes, too, ain’t you ? You talk like a feller that 
had been to college,” and, as the other assent- 
ed, he scornfully called to his friends, saying 
“Look here, fellers! Pipe the jellyfish! I never 
see one of these here animals that was worth a 
cuss; They plays football an’ smokes cigareets 
at school; then when they’re weaned they come 
off up here an’ jump our claims ’cause we can’t 
write a location notice proper. They ain’t no 
good. I guess I’ll stop it.” 

Captain moved toward the door, but the 
whaler threw his bulky frame against it and 
scowlingly blocked the way. 

“No, you don’t. You ain’t goin’ to run away 
till I’ve had the next dance, Mister Eddication ! 
Humph! I ain’t begun to tell ye yet what a use- 
less little barnacle you are. ” 

Red interf erred, saying : “ Look ’ere, George, 
this guy ain’t no playmate of yourn. We’ll all 
have a jolt of this disturbance promoter, an’ 
call it off. ” Then, as the others approached he 
winked at Captain, and jerked his head slightly 
toward the door. 


PARDNERS 


202 

The latter, heeding the signal, started out, 
but George leaped after him and, seizing an 
arm, whirled him back, roaring: 

64 Well, of all the cussed impidence I ever 
see! You’re too high-toned to drink with us, are 
you? You don’t get out of here now till you 
take a lickin’ like a man. ” 

He reached over his head and, grasping the 
hood of his fur shirt, with one movement he 
stripped it from him, exposing a massive naked 
body, whose muscles swelled and knotted be- 
neath a skin as clear as a maiden’s, while a 
map of angry scars strayed across the heavy 
chest. 

As the shirt sailed through the air, Red 
lightly vaulted to the bar and, diving at 
George’s naked middle, tackled beautifully, 
crying to Captain: “Get out quick; we’ll hold 
him.” 

Others rushed forward and grasped the 
bulky sailor, but Captain’s voice replied : “I 
sort of like this place, and I guess I’ll stay a 
while. Turn him loose.” 


North of Fifty -three 203 

“Why, man, he’ll kill ye,” excitedly cried 
Slim. “Get out!” 

The captive hurled his peacemakers from 
him and, shaking off the clinging arms, drove 
furiously at the insolent stranger. 

In the cramped limits of the corner where he 
stood, Captain was unable to avoid the big 
man, who swept him with a crash against the 
plank door at his back, grasping hungrily at 
his throat. As his shoulders struck, however, 
he dropped to his knees and, before the raging 
George could seize him, he avoided a blow 
which would have strained the rivets of a 
strength-tester and ducked under the other’s 
arms, leaping to the cleared centre of the 
floor. 

Seldom had the big man’s rush been avoided 
and, whirling, he swung a boom-like arm at the 
agile stranger. Before it landed, Captain step- 
ped in to meet his adversary and, with the 
weight of his body behind the blow, drove a 
clenched and bony fist crashing into the other’s 
face. The big head with its blazing shock of 


PARDNERS 


204 

hair snapped backward and the whaler droop- 
ed to his knees at the other’s feet. 

The drunken flush of victory swept over 
Captain as he stood above the swaying figure; 
then, suddenly, he felt the great bare arms 
close about his waist with a painful grip. He 
struck at the bleeding face below him and 
wrenched at the circling bands which wheezed 
the breath from his lungs, but the whaler 
squeezed him writhing to his breast, and, ris- 
ing, unsteadily wheeled across the floor and in 
a shiver of broken glass fell crashing against 
the bar and to the floor. 

As the struggling men writhed upon the 
planks the door opened at the hurried entrance 
of an excited group, which paused at the sight 
of the ruin, then, rushing forward, tore the men 
apart. 

The panting Berserker strained at the arms 
about his glistening body, while Captain, with 
sobbing sighs, relieved his aching lungs and 
watched his enemy, who frothed at the inter- 
ference. 


205 


North of Fifty -three 

“It was George’s fault,” explained Slim to 
the questions of the arrivals. “This feller tried 
to make a get-away, but George had to have 
his amusement.” 

A new-comer addressed the squaw-man in a 
voice as cold as the wind. “Cut this out, 
George! This is a friend of mine. You’re mak- 
ing this camp a reg’lar hell for strangers, and 
now I’m goin’ to tap your little snap. Cool off 
— see?” 

Jones’s reputation as a bad gun-man went 
hand in hand with his name as a good gambler, 
and his scanty remarks invariably evoked atten- 
tive answers, so George explained : “ I don’t like 
him Jones, and I was jus’ makin’ him over to 
look like a man. I’ll do it yet, too,” he flashed 
wrathfully at his quiet antagonist. 

“ ’Pears to me like he’s took a hand in the 
remodelling himself,” replied the gambler, 
“but if you’re lookin’ for something to do, 
here’s your chance. Windy Jim just drove in 
and says Barton and Kid Sullivan are adrift on 
the ice.” 


206 


PARDNERS 


“ What’s that?” questioned eager voices, 
and, forgetting the recent trouble at the news, 
the crowd pressed forward anxiously. 

“ They was crossin’ the bay and got carried 
out by the off-shore gale,” explained Jones. 
‘‘Windy was follerin’ ’em when the ice ahead 
parted and begun movin’ out. He tried to yell 
to ’em, but they was too far away to hear in the 
storm. He managed to get back to the land and 
follered the shore ice around. He’s over at 
Hunter’s cabin now, most dead, face and hands 
froze pretty bad. ” 

A torrent of questions followed and many 
suggestions as to the fate of the men. 

“They’ll freeze before they can get ashore,” 
said one. 

“The ice-pack’ll break up in this wind,” 
added another, “and if they don’t drown, 
they’ll freeze before the floe comes in close 
enough for them to land. ” 

From the first announcement of his friends’ 
peril, Captain had been thinking rapidly. His 
body, sore from his long trip and aching from 


North of Fifty -three 20? 

the hug of his recent encounter, cried woefully 
for rest, but his voice rose calm and clear: 
“ We’ve got to get them off,” he said. “Who 
will go with me ? Three is enough. ” 

The clamouring voices ceased, and the men 
wheeled at the sound, gazing incredulously at 
the speaker. “What! — “In this storm?” — 
“ You’re crazy, ” many voices said. 

He gazed appealingly at the faces before 
him. Brave and adventurous men he knew 
them to be, jesting with death, and tempered 
to perils in this land where hardship rises wdth 
the dawn, but they shook their ragged heads 
hopelessly. 

“We must save them!” resumed Captain 
hotly. “Barton and I played as children to- 
gether, and if there’s not a man among you 
who’s got the nerve to follow me — I’ll go alone 
by Heavens!” 

In the silence of the room, he pulled the cap 
about his ears and, tying it snugly under his 
chin, drew on his huge fur mittens; then with a 
scornful laugh he turned toward the door. 


208 


PARDNERS 


He paused as his eye caught the swollen face 
of Big George. Blood had stiffened in the heavy 
creases of his face like rusted stringers in a 
ledge, while his mashed and discoloured lips 
protruded thickly. His hair gleamed red, and 
the sweat had dried upon his naked shoulders, 
streaked with dirt and flecked with spots of 
blood, yet the battered features shone with the 
unconquered, fearless light of a rough, strong 
man. 

Captain strode to him with outstretched 
hand. “You’re a man,” he said. “You’ve got 
the nerve, George, and you’ll go with me, won’t 
you?” 

“What! Me?” questioned the sailor vague- 
ly. His wondering glance left Captain, and 
drifted round the circle of shamed and silent 
faces — then he straightened stiffly and cried : 
“Will I go with you? Certainly! I’ll go to — 
with you.” 

Ready hands harnessed the dogs, dragged 
from protected nooks where they sought cover 
from the storm which moaned and whistled 


North of Fifty-three 209 

round the low houses. Endless ragged folds of 
sleet whirled out of the north, then writhed and 
twisted past, vanishing into the grey veil 
which shrouded the landscape in a twilight 
gloom. 

The fierce wind sank the cold into the aching 
flesh like a knife and stiffened the face to a 
whitening mask, while a fusillade of frozen 
ice-particles beat against the eyeballs with 
blinding fury 

As Captain emerged from his cabin, furred 
and hooded, he found a long train of crouching, 
whining animals harnessed and waiting* while 
muffled figures stocked the sled with robes and 
food and stimulants. 

Big George approached through the whirl- 
ing white, a great squat figure with fluttering 
squirrel tails blowing from his parka, and at 
his heels there trailed a figure, skin-clad and 
dainty. 

“It’s my wife,” he explained briefly to Cap- 
tain. “She won’t let me go alone.” 

They gravely bade farewell to all, and the 


PARDNERS 


210 

little crowd cheered lustily against the whine of 
the blizzard as, with cracking whip and hoarse 
shouts, they were wrapped in the cloudy wind- 
ing sheet of snow. 

Arctic storms have an even sameness ; the in- 
tense cold, the heartless wind which augments 
tenfold the chill of the temperature, the air 
thick and dark with stinging flakes rushing by 
in an endless cloud. A drifting, freezing, shift- 
ing eternity of snow, driven by a ravening gale 
which sweeps the desolate, bald wastes of the 
Northland. 

The little party toiled through the smother 
till they reached the “egloos” under the breast 
of the tall, coast bluffs, where coughing Eski- 
mos drilled patiently at ivory tusks and gam- 
bled the furs from their backs at stud-horse 
poker. 

To George’s inquiries they answered that 
their largest canoe was the three-holed bidarka 
on the cache outside. Owing to the small circu- 
lar openings in its deck, this was capable of 


North of Fifty-three 211 

holding but three passengers, and Captain 
said: “ We’ll have to make two trips, George.” 

6 ‘Two trips, eh?” answered the other. 
“ We’ll be doin’ well if we last through one, I’m 
thinking.” 

Lashing the unwdeldy burden upon the sled, 
they fought their way along the coast again till 
George declared they were opposite the point 
where their friends went adrift. They slid their 
light craft through the ragged wall of ice hum- 
mocks guarding the shore pack, and dimly 
saw, in the grey beyond them, a stretch of 
angry waters mottled by drifting cakes and 
floes. 

George spoke earnestly to his wife, instruct- 
ing her to keep the team in constant motion up 
and down the coast a rifle-shot in either direc- 
tion, and to listen for a signal of the return. 
Then he picked her up as he would a babe, and 
she kissed his storm-beaten face. 

“She’s been a good squaw to me,” he said, 
as they pushed their dancing craft out into the 
breath of the gale, “ and I’ve always done the 


212 


PARDNERS 


square thing by her; I s’pose she’ll go back to 
her people now, though. ” 

The wind hurried them out from land, while 
it drove the sea-water in freezing spray over 
their backs and changed their fur garments 
into scaly armour, as they worked through the 
ice cakes, peering with strained eyes for a sign 
of their friends. 

The sailor, with deft strokes, steered them 
between the grinding bergs, raising his voice in 
long signals like the weird c± y of a siren. 

Twisting back and fcrLi through the floes, 
they held to their quest, now floating with the 
wind, now paddling desperately in a race with 
some drifting mass which dimly towered above 
them and splintered hungrily against its neigh- 
bour close in their wake. 

Captain emptied his six-shooter till his 
numbed fingers grew rigid as the trigger, and 
always at his back swelled the deep shouts of 
the sailor, who, with practised eye and mighty 
strokes, forced their way through the closing 
lanes between the jaws of the ice pack. 


North of Fifty -three 213 

At last, beaten and tossed, they rested dis- 
heartened and hopeless. Then, as they drifted, 
a sound struggled to them against the wind — a 
faint cry, illusive and fleeting as a dream voice 
— and, still doubting, they heard it again. 

“Thank God! We’ll save ’em yet,” cried 
Captain, and they drove the canoe boiling to- 
ward the sound. 

Barton and Sullivan had fought the cold and 
wind stoutly hour after hour, till they found 
their great floe was breaking up in the heaving 
waters. 

Then the horror of it had struck the Kid, till 
he raved and cursed up and down their little 
island, as it dwindled gradually to a small acre. 

He had finally yielded to the weight of the 
cold which crushed resistance out of him, and 
settled, despairing and listless, upon the ice. 
Barton dragged him to his feet and forced him 
round their rocking prison, begging him to 
brace up, to fight it out like a man, till the 
other insisted on resting, and dropped to his 
seat again. 


PARDNERS 


214 

The older man struck deliberately at the 
whitening face of his freezing companion, who 
recognized the well-meant insult and refused 
to be roused into activity. Then to their ears 
had come the faint cries of George, and, in an- 
swer to their screams, through the gloom they 
beheld a long, covered, skin canoe, and the 
anxious faces of their friends. 

Captain rose from his cramped seat, and, 
ripping his crackling garments from the boat 
where they had frozen, he wriggled out of the 
hole in the deck and grasped the weeping 
Barton. 

“Come, come, old boy! It’s all right now,” 
he said. 

“Oh, Charlie, Charlie!” cried the other. “I 
might have known you’d try to save us. You’re 
just in time, though, for the Kid’s about all in.” 

Sullivan apathetically nodded and sat down 
again. 

“Hurry up there; this ain’t no G. A. R. En- 
campment, and you ain’t got no time to spare,” 
said George, who had dragged the canoe out 


215 


North of Fifty -three 
and, with a paddle, broke the sheets of ice 
which covered it. “It’ll be too dark to see any- 
thing in half an hour/’ 

The night, hastened by the storm, was clos- 
ing rapidly, and they realized another need of 
haste, for, even as they spoke, a crack had 
crawled through the ice-floe where they stood, 
and, widening as it went, left but a heaving 
cake supporting them. 

George spoke quietly to Captain, while Bar- 
ton strove to animate the Kid. “You and 
Barton must take him ashore and hurry him 
down to the village. He’s most gone now.” 

“But you?” questioned the other. “We’ll 
have to come back for you, as soon as we put 
him ashore.” 

“Never mind me,” roughly interrupted 
George. “It’s too late to get back here. When 
you get ashore it’ll be dark. Besides Sullivan’s 
freezing, and you’ll have to rush him through 
quick. I’ll stay here.” 

“No! No! George!” cried the other, as the 
meaning of it bore in upon him. “I got you 


216 


PARDNERS 


into this thing, and it’s my place to stay here,. 
You must go — ” 

But the big man had hurried to Sullivan, 
and, seizing him in his great hands, shook 
the drowsy one like a rat, cursing and beating 
a goodly share of warmth back into him. Then 
he dragged the listless burden to the canoe 
and forced him to a seat in the middle opening. 

“ Come, come,” he cried to the others; “you 
can’t spend all night here. If you want to save 
the Kid, you’ve got to hurry. You take the front 
seat there, Barton,” and, as he did so, George 
turned to the protesting Captain: “Shut up, 
curse you, and get in!” 

“ I won’t do it,” rebelled the other. “I can’t 
let you lay down your life in this way, when I 
made you come.” 

George thrust a cold face within an inch of 
the other’s and grimly said: “If they hadn’t 
stopped me, I’d beat you into dog-meat this 
morning, and if you don’t quit this snivelling 
I’ll do it yet. Now get in there and paddle to 
beat — or you’ll never make it back. Quick!” 


North of Fifty-three 217 

“Til come back for you then, George, if I 
live to the shore,” Captain cried, while the 
other slid the burdened canoe into the icy 
waters. 

As they drove the boat into the storm, Cap- 
tain realized the difficulty of working their way 
against the gale. On him fell the added burden 
of holding their course into the wind and 
avoiding the churning ice cakes. The spray 
whipped into his face like shot, and froze as it 
clung to his features. He strained at his paddle 
till the sweat soaked out of him and the cold air 
filled his aching lungs. 

Unceasingly the merciless frost cut his face 
like a keen blade, till he felt the numb paraly- 
sis which told him his features were hardening 
under the touch of the cold. 

An arm’s length ahead the shoulders of the 
Kid protruded from the deck hole where he 
had sunk again into the death sleep, while 
Barton, in the forward seat, leaned wearily 
on his ice-clogged paddle, moaning as he strove 
to shelter his face from the sting of the blizzard. 


218 


PARDNERS 


An endless time they battled with the storm, 
slowly gaining, foot by foot, till in the dark- 
ness ahead they saw the wall of shore ice and 
swung into its partial shelter. 

Dragging the now unconscious Sullivan from 
the boat, Captain rolled and threshed him, 
while Barton, too weak and exhausted to assist, 
feebly strove to warm his stiffened limbs. 

In answer to their signals, the team appeared, 
maddened by the lash of the squaw. Then they 
wrapped Sullivan in warm robes, and forced 
scorching brandy down his throat, till he 
coughed weakly and begged them to let hint 
rest. 

“ You must hurry him to tlie Indian village , r 
directed Captain. “ He’ll only lose some fingers 
and toes now, maybe; but you’ve got to 
hurry!” 

“Aren’t you coming, too? queried Barton. 
“ We’ll hire some Eskimos to go after George. 
I’ll pay ’em anything. ” 

“No, I’m going back to him now; he’d 
freeze before we could send help, and, besides. 


North of Fifty-three 219 

they wouldn’t come out in the storm and the 
dark.” 

“But you can’t work that big canoe alone. If 
you get out there and don’t find him you’ll 
never get back. Charlie! let me go, too,” he 
said; then apologized. “I’m afraid I won’t last* 
though; I’m too weak. ” 

The squaw, who had questioned not at the 
absence of her lord, now touched Captain’s 
arm. “Come,” she said; “I go with you.” 
Then addressing Barton, “You quick go Ind- 
ian house; white man die, mebbe. Quick! I go 
Big George.” 

“Ah, Charlie, I’m afraid you’ll never make 
it,” cried Barton, and, wringing his friend’s 
hand, he staggered into the darkness behind 
the sled wherein lay the fur-bundled Sullivan. 

Captain felt a horror of the starving waters 
rise up in him and a panic shook him fiercely, 
till he saw the silent squaw waiting for him at 
the ice edge. He shivered as the wind searched 
through his dampened parka and hardened the 
vet clothing next to his body, but he took his 


220 


PARDNERS 


place and dug the paddle fiercely into the 
water, till the waves licked the hair of his 
gauntlets. 

The memory of that scudding trip through 
the darkness was always cloudy and visioned. 
Periods of keen alertness alternated with mo- 
ments when his weariness bore upon him till he 
stiffly bent to his work, wondering what it all 
meant. 

It was the woman’s sharpened ear which 
caught the first answering cry, and her hands 
which steered the intricate course to the heav- 
ing berg where the sailor crouched, for, at their 
approach. Captain had yielded to the drowse 
of weariness and, in his relief at the finding, the 
blade floated from his listless hands. 

He dreamed quaint dreams, broken by the 
chilling lash of spray from the strokes of the 
others, as they drove the craft back against the 
wind, and he only partly awoke from his leth- 
argy when George wrenched him from his seat 
and forced him down the rough trail toward 
warmth and safety. 


North of Fifty-three 221 

Soon, however, the stagnant blood tingled 
through his veins, and under the shelter of the 
bluffs they reached the village, where they 
found the anxious men waiting. 

Skilful natives had worked the frost from 
Sullivan’s members, and the stimulants in the 
sled had put new life into Barton as well. So, 
as the three crawled wearily through the dog- 
filled tunnel of the egloo, they were met by 
two wet-eyed and thankful men, who silently 
wrung their hands or uttered broken words. 

When they had been despoiled of their frozen 
furs, and the welcome heat of whisky and fire 
had met in their blood, Captain approached 
the whaler, who rested beside his mate. 

“George, you’re the bravest man I ever 
knew, and your woman is worthy of you, ” be 
said. He continued slowly, “I’m sorry about 
the fight this morning, too. ” 

The big man rose and, crushing the extend- 
ed palm in his grasp, said: “We’ll just let that 
go double, partner. You’re as game as I ever 
see.” Then he added: “It was too bad them 


/ 


222 PARDNERS 

fellers interferred jest when they did — but we 
can finish it up whenever you say,” and as the 
other, smiling, shook his head, he continued ? 
“Well, I’m glad of it, ’cause you’d sure beat 
me the next time.” 


WHERE NORTHERN LIGHTS 
COME DOWN O’ NIGHTS 


WHERE NORTHERN LIGHTS 
COME DOWN O’ NIGHTS 

The Mission House at Togiak stands forlornly 
on a wind-swept Alaskan spit, while huddled 
around it a swarm of dirt-covered “igloos” 
grovel in an ecstacy of abasement. 

Many natives crawled out of these and 
stared across the bay as down a gully came an 
Arctic caravan, men and dogs, black against 
the deadly whiteness. Ahead swung the guide, 
straddling awkwardly on his five foot webs, 
while the straining pack pattered at his heels. 
Big George, the driver, urged them with strong 
words, idioms of the Northland, and his long 
whip bit sharply at their legs. 

His companion, clinging to the sled, stumbled 
now and then, while his face, splitting from the 
snap of the frost, was smothered in a muffler. 


PARDNERS 


226 

Sometimes he fell, plunging into the snow, ris- 
ing painfully, and groaning with the misery of 
“ snow-blindness. ” 

“ Most there now, Cap, keep up your grit. ” 

“I’m all right,” answered the afflicted man, 
wearily. “Don’t mind me.” 

George, too, had suffered from the sheen of 
the unbroken whiteness, and, while his eyes 
had not wholly closed, he saw but dimly. His 
cheeks were grease-smeared, and blackened 
with charred wood to break the snow-glare, 
but through his mask showed signs of suffer- 
ing, while his blood-shot eyes dripped scald- 
ing tears and throbbed distressfully. For days 
he had not dared to lose sight of the guide. 
Once he had caught him sneaking the dogs 
away, and he feared he had killed the man 
for a time. Now Jaska broke trail ahead, 
his sullen, swollen features baleful in their 
injury. 

Down the steep bank they slid, across the 
humped up sea ice at the river mouth and into 
the village. 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 227 

At the greeting of their guide to his tribes- 
men, George started. Twelve years of coast 
life had taught him the dialect from Point 
Barrow south, and he glanced at Captain to 
find whether he, too, had heard the message. 
As Jaska handed a talisman to the chief he 
strode to him and snatched it. 

“Oho! It’s Father Orloff, is it P D — him!” 
He gazed at the token, a white spruce chip 
with strange marks and carvings. 

“What does it mean, George?” said the 
blind man. 

“It’s a long story, Charlie, and black. You 
should have known it before we started. I’m 
a marked man in this coast country. It’s Or- 
loff ’s work, the renegade. ‘Father,’ he calls 
himself. Father to these devils he rules and 
robs for himself in the name of the Church. 
His hate is bitter, and he’d have my life if 
these watery-livered curs didn’t dread the 
sound of my voice. God help him when we 
meet.” 

He shook his hairy claws at the hostile 


228 PARDNERS 

circle, then cried to the chief in the native 

tongue : — 

“Oh, Shaman! We come bleeding and 
weary. Hunger grips us and our bones are 
stiff with frost. The light is gone from my 
brother’s eyes and we are sick. Open you the 
door to the Mission House that the ‘Minoks’ 
may rest and grow strong.” 

The Indians clustered before the portal, 
with its rude cross above, and stared malig- 
nantly, while the chief spoke. At the name of 
his enemy the unsightly eyes of George gleam- 
ed, and he growled contemptuously, advanc- 
ing among them. They scattered at the man- 
ner of his coming, and he struck the padlocked 
door till it rattled stiffly. Then spying the cross 
overhead he lifted up and gripped the wood. It 
came away ripping, and with wails of rage and 
horror at the sacrilege, they closed about him. 

“Here, Cap! Bust her in quick!” He drag- 
ged Captain before the entrance, thrusting 
the weapon upon him, then ran ferociously 
among the people. He snatched them to him. 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 229 
cuffing like a bear and trampling them into 
the snow. Those who came into the reach of 
his knotty arms crumpled up and twisted un- 
der his feet. He whirled into the group, roar- 
ing hoarsely, his angry, grease-blackened face 
hideous with rage. The aborigine is not a 
fighting machine; for him the side-step and 
counter have no being. They melted ahead of 
his blazing wrath, and he whisked them, flee- 
ing, by their garments, so that they felt the 
stamp of his moccasined heels. 

Captain dragged the team within, and 
George following, blocked the shattered door. 

“ We’re safe as long as we stay in the 
Church,” said he. 

“Right of sanctuary, eh? Does it occur to 
you how we’re going to get out ?” 

“Never mind, we’ll get out somehow,” said 
he, and that night, as Charlie Captain, late 
University man and engineer, lay with eyes 
swathed in steaming cloths, the whaler spoke 
operosely and with the bitterness of great 
wrong. 


230 


PARDNERS 


“It happened when we rocked the bars of 
Forty _ Mile, before ever a Chechako had 
crossed the Chilcoot. I went over to the head- 
waters of the Tanana. Into the big valley I 
went and got lost in the Flats. ’Tis a wild 
country, rimmed by high mountains, full of 
niggerheads and tundra, with the river windin' 
clean back to the source of the Copper. I run 
out of grub. We always did them days, and 
built a raft to float down to the Yukon. A race 
with starvation, and a dead heat it near proved, 
too, though I had a shade the best of it. I drift- 
ed out into the main river, ravin’ mad, my 
‘Mukluks’ eat off and my moose-hide gun 
cover inside of me. 

“A girl spied me from the village, and ’twas 
her brought me ashore in her birch-bark and 
tended me in her wick-i-up till reason came 
and the blood ran through me again. 

“I mind seein’ a white man stand around 
at times and bearin’ him beg her to leave me to 
the old squaws. She didn’t though. She gave 
me bits of moose meat and berries and dried 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 231 
salmon, and when I come to one day I saw she 
was little and brown and pleadin’ and her 
clothes all covered with beads. Her eyes was big 
and sad, Cap, and dimples poked into her 
cheeks when she laughed. 

“ ’Twas then that Orloff takes a hand — 
the white man. A priest he called himself; 
breed, Russian. Maybe he was, but a blacker 
hearted thief never wronged a child. He wanted 
the girl, Metla, and so did I. When I asked her 
old man for her he said she was promised to 
the Russian. I laughed at him, and a chief 
hates to be mocked. You know what sway the 
Church has over these Indians. Well, Orloff is 
a strong man. He held ’em like a rock. He 
worked on ’em till one day the tribemen came 
to me in a body and said, ‘ Go ! ’ 

“ ‘ Give me the girl, and I will,’ says I. 
“Orloff sneered. ‘She was mine for a month 
before ye came,’ says he with the fiend showin’ 
back of his eyes. ‘ Do ye want her now ?’ 

“For a minute I believed him. I struck once 
to kill, and he went down. They closed on me 


232 PARDNERS 

as fast as I shook ’em off. ’Twas a beautiful 
sight for a ruction, on the high banks over the 
river, but I was like water from the sickness. I 
fought to get at their priest where he lay, to 
stamp out his grinning face before they 
downed me, but I was beat back to the bluff 
and I battled with my heels over the edge. I 
broke a pole from the fish-rack and a good 
many went down. Then I heard Metla calling 
softly from below : — 

“‘Jump!’ she said. ‘Big one, jump.’ 

“ She had loosed a canoe at the landing and 
now held it in the boiling current underneath, 
paddling desperately. 

“As they ran out of the tents with their 
rifles I leaped. 

“A long drop and cold water, but I hit feet 
first. When I rose the little girl was along- 
side. 

“ It’s a ticklish thing to crawl over the stern 
of a canoe in the spatter of slugs, with the roar 
of muzzle-loaders above. It’s shakin’ to the 
nerves, but the maid never flinched, not even 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 233 
when a bullet split the gunnel. She ripped a 
piece of her dress and plugged a hole under 
the water line while I paddled out of range. 

“The next winter at Holy Cross she ran to 
me shaking one day. 

“‘He is here! He is here! Oh, Big man, I am 
afraid!’ 

“‘Who’s here?’ says I. 

‘“He is here — Father Orloff,’ and her eyes 
was round and scared so that I took her up and 
kissed her while she clung to me — she was 
such a little girl. 

“‘He spoke to me at the water-hole, “I have 
come for you.” I ran very fast, but he came be- 
hind. “Where is George ?” ’ he said. 

“I went out of the cabin down to the Mis- 
sion, and into the house of Father Barnum. 
He was there. 

“‘Orloff! What do ye want ?’ I says. 

“Father Barnum speaks up — ‘he’s known 
for a good man the length of the river. George,’ 
says he, ‘Father Orloff tells me you stole the 
girl Metla from her tribe. ’Tis a shameful 


PARDNERS 


234 

thing for a white to take a red girl for his wife, 
but it’s a crime to live as you do.’ 

“ ‘ What ?’ says I. 

“‘We can’t sell you provisions nor allow 
you to stay in the village.’ 

“Orloff grins. ‘You must go on/ he says, 
‘ or give her up.’ 

“ ‘No! I’ll do neither/ And I shows the paper 
from the missionary at Nulato statin’ that we 
were married. ‘She’s my wife/ says I, ‘ and too 
good for me. She’s left her people and her gods, 
and I’ll care for her.’ I saw how it hurt Orloff, 
and I laid my hand on his shoulder close to 
the neck. ‘I distrust ye, and sure as Fate ye’ll 
die the shocking death if ever harm comes to 
the little one.’ 

“That was the winter of the famine, though 
every winter was the same then, and I went 
to Anvik for grub — took all the strong men 
and dogs in the village. I was afraid when 
I left, too, for ’twas the time I should have been 
with her, but there was no one else to go. 

“‘When you come back/ she said, ‘there 


Where Northern Lights Come Down %35 
will be another — a little boy — and he will 
grow mighty and strong, like his father . 5 She 
hung her arms around me, Cap, and I left with 
her kisses warm on my lips. 

“It was a terrible trip, the river wet with 
overflows and the cut-offs drifted deep, so I 
drove back into Holy Cross a week late with 
bleedin 5 dogs and frozen Indians strainin’ at 
the sled ropes. 

“I heard the wail of the old women before 
I come to the cabin, and when Metla had 
sobbed the stoiy out in her weakness, I went 
back into the dark and down to the Mission. 
I remember how the Northern Lights flared 
over the hills above, and the little spruces on 
the summit looked to me like headstones, 
black against the moon — and I laughed 
when I saw the snow red in the night glare, for 
it meant blood and death. 

“ It was as lusty a babe as ever crowed, but 
Orloff had come to the sick bed and sent her 
squaws away. Baptism and such tilings he 
said he’d do. The little fellow died that night. 


236 


PARDNERS 


“They say the Mission door was locked and 
barred, but I pushed through it like paper and 
came into Father Barnum’s house, where they 
sat. Fifty below is bad for the naked flesh. I 
broke in, bare-headed, mittenless, and I’d 
froze some on the way down. He saw murder 
in my eyes and tried to run, but I got him as he 
went out of the room. He tore his throat loose 
from my stiffened fingers and went into the 
church, but I beat down the door with my 
naked fists, mocking at his prayers inside, and 
may I never be closer to death than Orloff was 
that night. 

“Then a squaw tugged at my parka. 

“‘She is dying, Anguk,’ she said, and I ran 
back up the hill with the cold bitin’ at my heart. 

“There was no death that night in Holy 
Cross, though God knows one naked soul was 
due to walk out onto the snow. At daylight, 
when I came back for him, he had fled down 
the river with the fastest dogs, and to this day 
I’ve never seen his face, though ’tis often I’ve 
felt his hate. 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 231 
'‘He’s grown into the strongest missionary 
on the coast, and he never lets a chance go by 
to harry me or the girl. 

“D’ye mind the time ‘ Skagway ’ Bennet 
died ? We was pardners up Norton Sound way 
when he was killed. They thought he suicided, 
but I know. I found a cariboo belt in the brush 
near camp — the kind they make on the 
Kuskokwim, Father Orloff’s country. His 
men took the wrong one, that’s all. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell ye this, Cap, be- 
fore we started, for now we’re into the South 
Country, where he owns the natives. He 
knows we’ve come, as the blood-token of the 
guide showed. He wants my life, and there’s 
great trouble cornin’ up. I’m hopin’ ye’ll soon 
get your sight, for by now there’s a runner 
twenty miles into the hills with news that we’re 
blind in the church at Togiak. Three days he’ll 
be goin’, and on the fifth ye’ll hear the jangle 
of Russian dog-bells. He’ll kill the fastest 
team in Nushagak in the cornin’, and God 
help us if we’re here.” 


PARDNERS 


#38 

George scraped a bit of frost-lace from the 
lone window pane. Dark figures moved over 
the snow, circling the chapel, and he knew 
that each was armed. Only their reverence for 
the church held them from doing the task set 
by Orloff, and he sighed as he changed the 
bandages on his suffering mate. 

They awoke the next morning to the moan 
of wind and the sift of snow clouds past their 
walls. Staring through his peep-hole, George 
distinguished only a seethe of whirling flakes 
that greyed the view, blotting even the neigh- 
bouring huts, and when the early evening 
brought a rising note in the storm the trouble 
lifted from his face. 

“A three-day blizzard,” he rejoiced, "and 
the strongest team on the coast can’t wallow 
through it under a week. These on-shore gales 
is beauts.” 

For three days the wind tore from off the 
sea into the open bight at whose head lay 
Togiak, and its violence wrecked the armour 
of shore ice in the bay till it beat and roared 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 239 
against the spit, a threshing maelstrom of 
shattered bergs. The waters piled into the in- 
let driven by the lash of the storm till they 
overflowed the river ice behind the village, 
submerging and breaking it into ragged, dan- 
gerous confusion. 

On the third day, with Arctic vagary, the 
wind gasped reluctantly and scurried over the 
range. In its wake the surging ocean churned 
loudly and the back-water behind the town, 
held by the dam of freezing slush-ice at the 
river mouth, was skimmed by a thin ice-paper, 
pierced here and there by the up-ended piles 
from beneath. This held the night’s snow, so 
that morning showed the village girt on three 
sides by a stream soft-carpeted and safe to the 
eye, but failing beneath the feet of a child. 

“ You’re eyes are cornin’ along mighty 
slow,” worried George. “I’m hopin’ his rev- 
erence is up to his gills in drifts back yonder. 
We must leave him a sled trail for a souvenir.” 

“How can we, with the place guarded ?” 

“Hitch the dogs and run for it by night. 


240 


PARDNERS 


He’ll burn us out when he conies. Fine targets 
we’d make on the snow by the light of a burn- 
ing shack. If ye can see to shoot we’ll go to- 
night. Hello! What’s that ?” 

Outside came the howl of malamoots and 
the cry of men. Leaping to the window, George 
rubbed it free and stared into the sunshine. 

“Too late! Too late!” he said. “Here he 
comes! It’s time I killed him.” He spoke grat- 
ingly, with the dull anger of years. 

On the bright surface of the opposite hill- 
side a sled bearing a muffled figure appeared 
silhouetted against the glisten of the crust. Its 
team, maddened by the village scent, poured 
down the incline toward the river bank and the 
guide swung onto the runners behind, while 
the voice of the people rose to their priest. In a 
whirl of soft snow they drove down onto the 
treachery of the ice. The screams of the natives 
frenzied the pack and they rioted out onto the 
bending sheet, while the long sledge, borne 
by its momentum, shot forward till the split- 
ting cry of the ice sounded over the lamenta- 


Where Northern Lights Gome Down 241 
tions. It slackened, sagged and disappeared 
in a surge of congealing waters. The wheel 
dogs were dragged into the opening and their 
mates ahead jerked backward onto them. In a 
fighting tangle, all settled into the swirl. 

Orloff leaped from the sinking sled, but 
hindered by his fur swaddling, crashed through 
and lunged heavily in his struggles to mount 
the edge of the film. As he floundered onto the 
caving surface it let him back and the waters 
covered him time and again. He pitched oddly 
about, and for the first time they saw his eyes 
were bound tightly with bandages, which he 
strove to loosen. 

“My God! He’s snow-blind!” cried George,, 
and in a moment he appeared among th( 
frantic mob fringing the shore. 

The guide broke his way toward a hum- 
mock of old ice forming an islet near by, and 
the priest half swam, half scrambled behind, 
till they crawled out upon this solid footing. 
Here the wintry wind searched them and their 
dripping clothes stiffened quickly. Orloff drag- 


PARDNERS 


242 

ged the strips from his face, and as the sun 
glitter pierced his eyes he writhed as though 
seared by the naked touch of hot steel. 

He shouted affrightedly in his blindness, but 
the mocking voice of Big George answered 
him and he cowered at the malevolence in the 
words. 

“Here I am, Orloff. It’s help ye want, is it ? 
I’ll shoot the man that tries to reach ye. Ha, 
ha! You’re freezin’ eh? Georgie will talk to 
keep ye awake. A dirty trick of the river to 
cheat me so. I’ve fattened for years on the hope 
of stampin’ your life out and now it’s robbed 
me. But I’ll stick till ye’re safe in Hell.” 

The man cried piteously, turning his bleared 
eyes toward the sound. 

“Shoot, why don’t you, and end it? Can’t 
you see we’re freezing?” He stood up in his 
carapace of stiffened clothes, shivering pal- 
siedly. 

“The truest thing ye ever said,” cried 
George, and he swung his colts into view. 
“It’ll favour you and I’ll keep my vow.” He 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 243 
raised the gun. The splashing of the distant 
dogs broke the silence. A native knelt stiffly. 

“George! George!” Captain had stumbled 
down among them and plucked at his arm, 
peering dimly into his distorted face. “Great 
God, are you a murderer ? They’ll be dead be- 
fore we can save them.” 

“Save ’em?” said George, while reason 
fought with his mania. “Whose goin’ to save 
’em ? He needs killin’. I’m hungry for his life.” 

“He’s a man, George. They’re both human, 
and they’re dying in sight of us. Give him a 
chance. Fight like a man.” 

As he spoke the fury fell away from the 
whaler and he became the alert, strong man 
of the frontier, knowing the quick danger 
and meeting it. 

He bellowed at the natives and they fled 
backward before his voice, storming the 
cache where lay the big skin canoes. They 
slid one down and seizing paddles crushed 
the ice around it till it floated, then supported 
by the prow, George stamped the ice into 


PARDNERS 


244 

fragments ahead, and they forced their way 
slowly along the channel he made. Soaked to 
the armpits he smashed a trail through which 
they reached the hummock where the others 
lay, too listless for action. 

At the shore they bore the priest to their 
shelter while the guide was snatched into a 
near-by hut. They hacked off his brittle clothes 
and supported him to the bed. As he walked 
his feet clattered on the board floor like the 
sound of wooden shoes. They were white and 
solid, as were his hands. 

“He’s badly frozen,” whispered Captain, 
“can we save him ?” They rubbed and thawed 
for hours, but the sluggish blood refused to 
flow into the extremities and Captain felt that 
this man would die for lack of amputation. 

Through all the Russian was silent, gazing 
strangely at George. 

“ 5 Tis no use,” finally said the big man, de- 
spairingly, “I’ve seen too many of ’em; we’ve 
done our best.” 

He disappeared, and there sounded the 


Where Northern Lights Come Down 24 5 
■jingle of harness as the dogs were hitched. As 
he entered for the camp outfit Orloff spoke: 

“ George Brace, I’ve harmed you bitterly 
these many years, and you’re a good man to 
help me so. It’s no use. We have both fought 
the Cold Death, and know when to quit. I 
came here to kill you, but you will go out across 
the mountains free, while I rave in madness 
and the medicine men make charms over me. 
When you come into Bethel Mission I’ll be 
dead. Good-bye.” 

“Good Hell! We’re takin’ ye to Bethel and a 
doctor in ten minutes. A week’s travel as the 
trail goes, but we’ll save a chunk of ye yet, old 
man.” 

Five days later a broken team crawled over 
the snow to the Moravian Mission, urged by 
two men gaunt from the trail, and blistered by 
the cold. From the sledge came shrieks arid 
throaty mutterings, horrid gabblings of post- 
freezing madness and Dr. Forrest, lifting back 
the robe, found Orloff lashed into his couch. 

“Five days from Togiak. Two hundred 


PARDNERS 


246 

miles in heavy trails,” explained George 
wearily, as the cries of the maniac dimmed be- 
hind the log walls. 

Two hours later Forrest spoke gravely as 
they nursed their frost bites in his room. 

“We have operated. He will recover.” 

“It’s a sad, sad day, ” ^nourned George. “It 
just takes the taste out of everything for me. 
He’s a cripple now, eh P” 

“Yes! Helpless! I did not know Father Or- 
loff had many — er — friends hereabout, ” 
continued the doctor. “He was thought to be 
hated by the whites. I’m glad the report was 
wrong. ” 

“ Friends be damned, ” said the other strong- 
ly. “What’s a friend? Ye can get them any 
place, but where can ye find another enemy 
like that man ?” 


THE SCOURGE 


I 





THE SCOURGE 


Coming down coast from the Kotzebue country 
they stumbled onto the little camp in the early 
winter, and as there was food a plenty, of its 
kind, whereas they had subsisted for some days 
on puree of seal oil and short ribs of dog, Cap- 
tain and Big George decided to winter. A max- 
im of the north teaches to cabin by a grub-pile. 

It was an odd village they beheld that first 
day. Instead of the clean moss-chinked log 
shelters men were wont to build in this land* 
they found the community housed like mar- 
mots in holes and burrows. 

It seemed that the troop had landed, fresh 
from the States, a hundred and a quarter 
strong, hot with the lust for gold, yet shaken by 
the newspaper horrors of Alaska’s rigorous 
hardships and forbidding climate. 


250 


PARDNERS 


Debouching in the early fall, they had hastily 
prepared for an Associated Press-painted Arc- 
tic winter. 

Had they been forced to winter in the moun^ 
tains of Idaho, or among Montana’s passes 
they would have prepared simply and effect 
ively. Here, however, in a mystic land, sui 
rounded by the unknown, they grew pani** 
stricken and lost their wits. 

Thus, when the two “ old timers” came upon 
them in the early winter they found them in 
bomb-proof hovels, sunk into the muck, bank- 
ed with log walls, and thatched over with dirt 
and sod. 

‘‘Where are your windows and ventilators ?” 
they were asked, and collectively the camp 
laughed at the question. They knew how to 
keep snug and warm even if half-witted “ sour- 
doughs” didn’t. They weren’t taking any 
chances on freezing, not on your tin-type, no 
outdoor work and exposure for them ! 

As the winter settled, they snuggled back* 
ate three meals and more daily of bacon, beans, 


251 


The Scourge 
and baking-powder bread; playing cribbage for 
an appetite. They undertook no exercise more 
violent than seven-up, while the wood-cutting 
fell as a curse upon those unfortunates who lost 
at the game. They giggled at Captain and the 
big whaler who daily, snow or blow, hit the 
trail or wielded pick and shovel. 

However, as the two maintained their prac- 
tice, the camp grew to resent their industry, 
and, as is possible only in utterly idle commu- 
nities, there sprung up a virulence totally out of 
proportion, and, founded without reason, most 
difficult to dispel. Before they knew it, the two 
were disliked and distrusted; their presence 
ignored; their society shunned. 

Captain had talked to many in the camp. 

“You’ll get scurvy, sure, living in these dark 
houses. They’re damp and dirty, and you don’t 
exercise. Besides, there isn’t a pound of fresh 
grub in camp. ” 

Figuratively, the camp’s nose had tilted at 
this, and it stated pompously that it were bet- 
ter to preserve its classic purity of features and 


£5£ 


PARDNERS 


pro rata of toes, than to jeopardize these ad- 
juncts through fear of a possible blood disease. 

“ Blood disease, eh?” George snorted like a 
sea-lion. “Wait till your legs get black and you 
spit your teeth out like plum-pits - — mebbe 
you’ll listen then. It’ll come, see if it don’t. ” 

He was right. Yet when the plague did grip 
the camp and men died, one in five, they failed 
to rise to it. Instead of fighting manfully they 
lapsed into a frightened, stubborn coma. 

There was one, and only one, who did not. 
Klusky the Jew; Klusky the pariah. They said 
he worked just to be ornery and different from 
the rest, he hated them so. They enjoyed bait- 
ing him to witness his fury. It sated that taint 
of Roman cruelty inherent in the man of ignor- 
ance. He was all the amusement they had, for 
it wasn’t policy to stir up the two others — 
they might slop over and clean up the village. 
So they continued to goad him as they had 
done since leaving ’Frisco. They gibed and 
jeered till he shunned them, living alone in the 
fringe of the pines, bitter and vicious, as an out- 


253 


The Scourge 
cast from the pack will grow, whether human 
or lupine. He frequented only the house of 
Captain and George, because they were exiles 
like himself. 

The partners did not relish this overmuch, 
for he was an odious being, avaricious, carping, 
and dirty. 

“His face reminds me of a tool,” said 
George, once, “nose an’ chin shuts up like 
calipers. He’s got the forehead of a salmon 
trout, an’ his chin don’t retreat, it stampedes, 
plumb down ag’in his apple. Look out for that 
droop of the mouth. I’ve seen it before, an’ his 
eyes is bad, too. They’ve stirred him up an’ 
pickled all the good he ever had. Some day he’ll 
do a murder.” 

“I wonder what he means by always saying 
he’ll have revenge before spring. It makes me 
creep to hear him cackle and gloat. I think he’s 
going crazy.” 

“Can’t tell. This bunch would bust any- 
body’s mental tugs, an’ they make a mistake 
drivin’ him so. Say! How’s my gums look to- 


RARDNERS 


night?” George stretched his lips back, show- 
ing his teeth, while Captain made careful ex- 
amination. 

“All right. How are mine?” 

“Red as a berry. ” 

Every day they searched thus for the symp- 
toms, looking for discolouration, and anxiously 
watching bruises on limb or body. Men live in 
fear when their comrades vanish silently from 
their midst. Each night upon retiring they felt 
legs nervously, punching here and there to see 
that the flesh retained its resiliency. 

So insidious is the malady’s approach that it 
may be detected only thus. A lassitude perhaps, 
a rheumatic laziness, or pains and swelling at 
the joints. Mayhap one notes a putty-like soft- 
ness of the lower limbs. Where he presses, the 
finger mark remains, filling up sluggishly. No 
mental depression at first, nor fever, only a 
drooping ambition, fatigue, enlarging parts, 
now gradual, now sudden. 

The grim humour of seeing grown men 
gravely poking their legs with rigid digits, or 


The Scourge 255 

grinning anxiously into hand-mirrors had 
struck some of the tenderfeet at first, but the 
implacable progress of the disease; its black, 
merciless presence, pausing destructively here 
and there, had terrorized them into a hopeless 
fatalism till they cowered helplessly, awaiting 
its touch. 

One night Captain announced to his part- 
ner. “I’m going over to the Frenchmen’s, I 
hear Menard is down.” 

“What’s the use of buttin’ in where ye ain’t 
wanted ? As fer me, them frogeaters can all die 
like salmon; I won’t go nigh ’em an’ I’ve told 
’em so. I give ’em good advice, an’ what’d I 
get P What’d that daffy doctor do ? Pooh- 
poohed at me an’ physiced them. Lord! Physic 
a man with scurvy — might as well bleed a 
patient fer amputation.” George spoke with 
considerable heat. 

Captain pulled his parka hood well down so 
that the fox-tails around the edge protected his 
features, and stepped out into the evening. He 
had made several such trips in the past few 


256 PARDNERS 

months to call on men smitten with the sick- 
ness, but all to no effect. Being “chechakos” 
they were supreme in their conceit, and refused 
to heed his advice. 

Returning at bed time he found his partner 
webbing a pair of snow-shoes by the light of a 
stinking “go-devil,” consisting of a string sus- 
pended in a can of molten grease. The camp 
had sold them grub, but refused the luxury of 
candles. Noting his gravity, George questioned : 

“Well, how’s Menard?” 

“Dead!” Captain shook himself as though 
at the memory. “It was awful. He died while I 
was talking to him.” 

“Don’t say! How’s that?” 

“I found him propped up in a chair. He 
looked bad, but said he was feeling fine — ” 

“That’s the way they go. I’ve seen it many a 
time — feelin’ fine plumb to the last.” 

“He’d been telling me about a bet he had 
with Promont. Promont was taken last week, 
too, you know, same time. Menard bet him 
twenty dollars that he’d outlast him. ” 


The Scourge 257 

“‘I’m getting all right,’ says he, ‘but poor 
Promont’s going to die. I’ll get his twenty* 
sure!’ I turned to josh with the boy a bit, an r 
when I spoke to Menard he didn’t answer. Hia 
jaw had sagged and he’d settled in his chair,. 
Promont saw it, too, and cackled. ‘H’l ’ave 
win de bet! H’l ’ave win de bet!’ That’s all. He 
just slid off. Gee! It was horrible.” 

George put by his work and swore, pacing 
the rough pole floor. 

“Oh, the cussed fools! That makes six dead 
from the one cabin — six from eighteen, an’ 
Promont’ll make seven to-morrow. Do ye mind 
how we begged ’em to quit that dug-out an’ 
build a white man’s house, an’ drink spruce 
tea, an’ work ? They’re too — lazy. They lie 
around in that hole, breath bad air, an’ rot.” 

“And just to think, if we only had a crate of 
potatoes in camp we could save every man jack 
of ’em. Lord! They never even brought no 
citric acid nor lime juice — nothin’! If we 
hadn’t lost our grub when the whale-boat up- 
set, eh? That ten-gallon keg of booze would 


258 


FARDNERS 


help some. Say! I got such a thirst I don’t 
never expect to squench it proper;” he spoke 

plaintively. 

“ Klusky was here again while you was gone, 
too. I itch to choke that Jew whenever he gets 
to ravin’ over these people. He’s sure losin’ his 
paystreak. He gritted his teeth an’ foamed like 
a mad malamoot, I never see a low-downer 
lookin’ aspect than him when he gets mad.” 

“‘I’ll make ’em come to me,’ says he, ‘on 
their bellies beggin’. It ain’t time yet. Oh, no! 
Wait ’till half of ’em is dead, an’ the rest is rot- 
ten with scurvy. Then they’ll crawl to me with 
their gums thick and black, an’ their flesh like 
dough; they’ll kiss my feet an’ cry, an’ I’ll 
stamp ’em into the snow!’ You’d ought a heard 
him laugh. Some day I’m goin’ to lay a hand on 
that man, right in my own house.” 

As they prepared for bed, Captain remarked : 

“By the way, speaking of potatoes, I heard 
to-night that there was a crate in the French- 
men’s outfit somewhere, put in by mistake, 
perhaps, but when they boated their stuff up 


The Scourge 259 

river last fall it couldn’t be found — must have 
been lost.” 

It was some days later that, returning from 
a gameless hunt, Captain staggered into camp, 
weary from the drag of his snow-shoes. 

Throwing himself into his bunk he rested 
while George prepared the meagre meal of 
brown beans, fried salt pork, and sour-dough 
bread. The excellence of this last, due to the 
whaler’s years of practice, did much to miti- 
gate the unpleasantness of the milkless, but- 
terless, sugarless menu. 

Captain’s fatigue prevented notice of the 
other’s bearing. However, when he had supped 
and the dishes were done George spoke, quiet- 
ly and without emotion. 

“Well, boy, the big thing has come off.” 

“What do you mean ?” 

For reply he took the grease dip and, holding 
it close, bared his teeth. 

With a cry Captain leaped from his bunk, 
wad took his face between his hands. 

“ Great God! George!” 


260 


PARDNERS 


He pushed back the lips. Livid blotches met 
his gaze — the gums swollen and discoloured. 
He dropped back sick and pale, staring at his 
bulky comrade, dazed and uncomprehending. 

Carefully replacing the lamp, George con- 
tinued : 

“I felt it cornin’ quite a while back, pains in 
my knees an’ all that — thought mebbe you’d 
notice me hobblin’ about. I can’t git around 
good — feel sort of stove up an’ spavined on 
my feet.” 

“Yes, yes, but we’ve lived clean, and exer- 
cised, and drank spruce tea, and — every- 
thing,” cried the other. 

“I know, but I’ve had a touch before; it’s 
in my blood I reckon. Too much salt grub ; too 
many winters on the coast. She never took me 
so sudden an’ vicious though. Guess the stuff’s 
off.” 

“Don’t talk that way,” said Captain, sharp- 
ly. “You’re not going to die — I won’t let 
you.” 

“Vat’s the mattaire?” came a leering voice 


The Scourge 261 

and, turning they beheld Klusky, the renegade. 
He had entered silently, as usual, and now 
darted shrewd inquiring glances at them. 

“George has the scurvy.” 

“ Oi ! Oi ! Oi ! Vat a peety. ” He seemed about 
to say more but refrained, coming forward rub- 
bing his hands nervously. 

“It ain’t possible that a 4 sour dough’ shall 
have the scoivy. ” 

“Well, he has it — has it bad but I’ll cure 
him. Yes, and I’ll save this whole — camp, 
whether they want it or not.” Captain spoke 
strongly, his jaws set with determination. 
Klusky regarded him narrowly through close 
shrunk eyes, while speculation wrinkled his 
low forehead. 

“Of course! Yes! But how shall it be, eh? 
Tell me that.” His eagerness was pronounced. 

“I’ll go to St. Michaels and bring back fresh 
grub.” 

“You can’t do it, boy,” said George. “It’s 
too far an’ there ain’t a dog in camp. You 
couldn’t haul your outfit alone, an’ long before 


262 


PARDNERS 


you’d sledded grub back I’d be wearin’ one of 
them gleamin’ orioles, I believe that’s what 
they call it, on my head, like the pictures of 
them little fat angelettes. I ain’t got no ear for 
music, so I’ll have to cut out the harp solos/’ 
“Quit that talk, will you ?” said Captain ir- 
ritably. “ Of course, one man can’t haul an out- 
fit that far, but two can, so I’m going to take 
Kiusky with me.” He spoke with finality, and 
the Jew started, gazing queerly. “We’ll go 
light, and drive back a herd of reindeer.” 

“By thunder! I’d clean forgot the reindeer. 
The government was aimin’ to start a post 
there last fall, wasn’t it? Say! Mebbe you can 
make it after all, Kid.” His features brighten- 
ed hopefully. “What d’ ye say, Kiusky?” 

The one addressed answered nervously, al- 
most with excitement. 

“It can’t be done! It ain’t possible, and 1 
ain’t strong enough to pull the sled. V’y don’t 
you and George go together. I’ll stay — ” 
Captain laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. 
“That’ll do. What are you talking about? 


203 


me Scourge 
George wouldn’t last two days, and you know 
it. Now listen. You don’t have to go, you in- 
fernal greasy dog, there are others in camp, 
and one of them will go if I walk him at the 
muzzle of a gun. I gave you first chance, be- 
cause we’ve been good to you. Now get out.” 

He snatched him from his seat and hurled 
him at the door, where he fell in a heap. 

Klusky arose, and, although his eyes snap- 
ped wildly and he trembled, he spoke insidi- 
ously, with oily modulation. 

“Vait a meenute, Meestaire Captain, vait a 
meenute. I didn’t say I vouldn’t go. Oi! Oi! 
Vat a man! Shoor I’ll go. Coitenly! You have 
been good to me and they have been devils. 1 
hope they die. ” He shook a bony fist in the di- 
rection of the camp, while his voice took on its 
fanatical shrillness. “ They shall be in h — be- 
fore I help them, the pigs, but you — ah, yor 
have been my friends, yes ?” 

“All right; be here at daylight,” said Cap- 
tain gruffly. Anger came slowly to him, and its 
race was even slower in its leaving. 


264 


PARDNERS 


“I don’t like him,” said George, when he 
had slunk out. “He ain’t on the level. Watch 
him close, boy, he’s up to some devilment.” 

“Keep up your courage, old man. I’ll be 
back in twelve days. ” Captain said it with de- 
cision, though his heart sank as he felt the un- 
certainties before him. 

George looked squarely into his eyes. 

“God bless ye, boy,” he said. “I’ve cabined 
with many a man, but never one like you. I’m 
a hard old nut, an’ I ain’t worth what you’re 
goin’ to suffer, but mebbe you can save these 
other idiots. That’s what we’re put here for, to 
help them as is too ornery to help theirselves.” 
He smiled at Captain, and the young man 
left him blindly. He seldom smiled, and to 
see it now made his partner’s breast heave 
achingly. 

“Good old George!” he murmured as they 
pulled out upon the river. “ Good old George!” 
As they passed from the settlement an Indian 
came to the door of the last hovel. 


265 


The Scourge 
“Hello. There’s a Siwash in your cabin,” 
said Captain. “What is he doing there?” 

“That’s all right,” rejoined Klusky. “I told 
him to stay and vatch t’ings. ” 

“Rather strange,” thought the other. “I 
wonder what there is to watch. There’s never 
been any stealing around here. ” 

To the unversed, a march by sled would 
seem simplicity. In reality there is no more dis- 
couraging test than to hit the trail, dogless and 
by strength of back. The human biped cannot 
drag across the snow for any distance more 
than its own weight; hence equipment is of the 
simplest. At that, the sledge rope galls one’s 
neck with a continual, endless, yielding drag, 
resulting in back pains peculiar to itself. It is 
this eternal maddening pull, with the pitiful 
crawling gait that tells; horse’s labour and a 
snail’s pace. The toil begets a perspiration 
which the cold solidifies midway through the 
garments. At every pause the clammy clothes 
grow chill, forcing one forward, onward, with 
sweating body and freezing face. In extreme 


PARDNERS 


£66 

cold, snow pulverizes dryly till steel runners 
drag as though slid through sand. Occasional 
overflows bar the stream from bank to bank, 
resulting in wet feet and quick changes by has- 
ty fires to save numb toes. Now the air is dead 
under a smother of falling flakes that fluff up 
ankle deep, knee deep, till the sled plunges 
along behind, half buried, while the men wal- 
low and invent ingenious oaths. Again the wind 
whirls it by in grotesque goblin shapes; won- 
derful storm beings, writhing, whipping, biting 
as they pass; erasing bank and mountain. Yet 
always there is that aching, steady tug of the 
shoulder-rope, stopping circulation till the 
arms depend numbly; and always the weary 
effort of trail breaking. 

Captain felt that he had never worked with a 
more unsatisfying team mate. Not that Klusky 
did not pull, he evidently did his best, but he 
never spoke, while the other grew ever con- 
scious of the beady, glittering eyes boring into 
his back. At camp, the Jew watched him fur- 
tively, sullenly, till he grew to feel oppressed, as 



They grappled and jelly rolling in a tangle o f rope. 





267 


The Scourge 
with a sense of treachery, or some fell design 
hidden far back. Every morning he secured the 
ropes next the sled, thus forcing Captain to 
walk ahead. He did not object to the added 
task of breaking trail, for he had expected the 
brunt of the work, but the feeling of suspicion 
increased till it was only by conscious effort 
that he drove himself to turn his back upon the 
other and take up the journey. 

It was this oppression that warned him on 
the third day. Leaning as he did against the 
sled ropes he became aware of an added 
burden, as though the man behind had eased 
to shift his harness. When it did not cease he 
glanced over his shoulder. Keyed up as he was 
this nervous agility saved him. 

Klusky held a revolver close up to his back, 
and, though he had unconsciously failed to 
pull, he mechanically stepped in the other’s 
tracks. The courage to shoot had failed him 
momentarily, but as Captain turned, it came, 
and he pulled the trigger. 

Frozen gun oil has caused grave errors in 


PARDNERS 


, 268 

calculation. The hammer curled back wickedly 
and stuck. Waiting his chance he had carried 
the weapon in an outer pocket where the frost 
had stiffened the grease. Had it been warmed 
next his body, the fatal check would not have 
occurred. Even so, he pulled again and it ex- 
ploded sharp and deafening in the rarefied 
morning air. In that instant’s pause, however. 
Captain had whirled so that the bullet tore 
through the loose fur beneath his arm. He 
struck, simultaneously with the report, and the 
gun flew outward, disappearing in the snow. 

They grappled and fell, rolling in a tangle of 
rope, Klusky fighting with rat-like fury, whin- 
ing odd, broken curses. The larger man crush- 
ed him in silence, beating him into the snow, 
bent on killing him with his hands. 

As the other’s struggles diminished, he came 
to himself, however, and desisted. 

“I can’t kill him,” he thought in panic. “I 
can’t go on alone.” 

“Get up!” He kicked the bleeding figure till 
it arose lamely. “Why did you do that?” His 


The Scourge 269 

desire to strangle the life from him was over- 
powering. 

The man gave no answer, muttering only un- 
intelligible jargon, his eyes ablaze with hatred. 

“Tell me. ” He shook him by the throat but 
received no reply. Nor could he, try as he 
pleased; only a stubborn silence. At last, 
disgusted and baffled, he bade him resume the 
rope. It was necessary to use force for this, 
but eventually they took up the journey, dif- 
fering now only in their order of precedence. 

“If you make a move I’ll knife you,” he 
cautioned grimly. “That goes for the whole 
trip, too.” 

At evening he searched the grub kit, break- 
ing knives and forks, and those articles which 
might be used as means of offence, throwing 
the pieces into the snow. 

“Don’t stir during the night, or I might kill 
you. I wake easy, and hereafter we’ll sleep 
together.” Placing the weapons within his 
shirt he bound the other’s wrists and rolled 
up beside him. 


PARDNERS 


£70 

Along the coast, their going became difficult 
from the rough ice and soft snow, and with de- 
spair Captain felt the days going by. Klusky 
maintained his muteness and, moreover, to the 
anger of his captor, began to shirk. It became 
necessary to beat him. This Captain did relent- 
lessly, deriving a certain satisfaction from it, 
yet marvelling the while at his own cruelty. 
The Jew feigned weariness, and began to limp 
as though foot-sore. 

Captain halted him at last. 

“Don’t try that game,” he said. “It don’t 
go. I spared your life for a purpose. The minute 
you stop pulling, that minute I’ll sink this into 
your ribs.” He prodded him with his sheath 
knife. “ Get along now, or I’ll make you haul it 
alone.” He kicked him into resentful motion 
again, for he had come to look upon him as an 
animal, and was heedless of his signs of torture 
— so thus they marched ; master and slave. 
“He’s putting it on,” he thought, but abuse as 
he might, the other’s efforts became weaker £ , 
and his agony more marked as the days passed^ 


The Scourge 271 

The morning came when he refused to arise. 

“Get up!” 

Klusky shook his head. 

“ Get up, I say!” Captain spoke fiercely, and 
snatched him to foot, but with a groan the man 
sank back. Then, at last, he talked. 

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it. My legs make 
like they von’t vork. You can kill me, but I 
can’t valk.” 

As he ceased. Captain leaned down and 
pushed back his lips. The teeth were loose and 
the gums livid. 

“Great Heavens, what have I done! What 
have I done!” he muttered. 

Klusky had watched his face closely. 

“Vat’s the mattaire? Vy do you make like 
that, eh ? Tell me.” His voice was sharp. 

“You’ve got it.” 

“I’ve got it? Oi! Oi! I’ve got it! Vat have I 
got?” He knew before the answer came, but 
raved and cursed in frenzied denial. His tongue 
started, language flowed from him freely. 

“It ain’t that. No! No! It is the rheumatis- 


272 PARTNERS 

sen. Yes, it shall be so. It makes like that from 
the hard vork always. It is the cold — the cold 
makes it like.” 

With despair Captain realized that he could 
neither go on, dragging the sick man and out- 
fit, nor could he stay here in idleness to sacri- 
fice the precious days that remained to his 
partner. Each one he lost might mean life or 
death. 

Klusky broke in upon him. 

“You von’t leave me, Mistaire Captain? 
Please you von’t go avay?” 

Such frightened entreaty lay in his request 
that before thinking the other replied. 

“No, I won’t. I made you come and I’ll do 
all I can for you. Maybe somebody will pass. ” 
He said it only to cheer, for no one travelled 
this miserable stretch save scattering, half- 
starved Indians, but the patient caught at it 
eagerly, hugging the hope to his breast during 
the ensuing days. 

That vigil beside the dying creature lived 
long in Captain's memory. The bleak, timber- 


The Scourge £73 

less shores of the bay; their tiny tent, crouched 
fearfully among the willow tops; the silent 
nights, when in the clear, cold air the stars 
stared at him close and big, like eyes of wolves 
beyond a camp fire; the days of endless gab- 
blings from the sinking man, and the all per- 
vading cold. 

At last, knowledge dawned upon the invalid, 
and he called his companion to his side. Shiv- 
ering there beneath the thin tent. Captain 
heard a story, rambling at first, filled with 
hatred and bitterness toward the men who had 
scoffed at him, yet at the last he listened eager- 
ly, amazedly, and upon its conclusion rose 
suddenly, gazing at the dying man in horror. 

“My God, Klusky! Hell isn’t black enough 
for you. It can’t be true, it can't be. You’re 
raving! Do you mean to say that you let those 
poor devils die like rats while you had pota- 
toes in your cabin, fresh ones ? Man ! Man ! The 
juice of every potato was worth a life. You’re 
lying, Klusky.” 

“I ain’t. No, I ain’t. I hate them! I said 


274 


PARDNERS 


they should crawl on their bellies to me. Yes, 
and I should wring the money out. A hundred 
dollars for von potato. I stole them all. Ha! ha! 
and I kept them varm. Oh, yes! Alvays varm 
by the fire, so they shall be good and fine for 
the day.” 

“ That’s why you left the Indian there when 
we came away, eh ? To keep a fire.” 

“ Shoor ! and I thought I shall kill you and go 
back alone so nobody shall make for the rescue. 
Then I should have the great laugh.” 

Captain bared his head to the cold outside 
the tent. He was dazed by the thought of it. 
The man was crazed by abuse. The camp had 
paid for its folly! 

Then a hope sprang up in him. It was too late 
to go on and return with the deer; that is, too 
late for George, and he thought only of him ; of 
the big, brave man sitting alone in the cabin, 
shunned by the others, waiting quietly for his 
coming, tracing the relentless daily march of 
the disease. Why didn’t the Jew die so he could 
flee back ? He had promised not to desert him, 


The Scourge 27 5 

and he could not break his word to a dying 
man, even though the wretch deserved dam- 
nation. But why couldn’t he die ? What made 
him hang on so ? In his idle hours he arranged 
a pack for the start, assembling his rations. He 
could not be hampered by the sled. This was to 
be a race — he must travel long and fast. The 
sick man saw the preparations, and cried 
weakly, the tears freezing on his cheeks, and 
still he lingered, lingered maddeningly, till at 
last, when Captain had lost count of the days, he 
passed without a twitch and, before the body 
had cooled, the northward bluffs hid the plod- 
ding, snow-shoed figure hurrying along the 
back trail. 

He scarcely stopped for sleep or food, but 
gnawed raw bacon and frozen bread, swinging 
from shoe to shoe, devouring distance with the 
steady, rhythmic pace of a machine. He made no 
fires. As darkness settled, rendering progress a 
peril, he unrolled his robe, and burrowed into 
some overhanging drift, and the earliest hint of 
dawn found him miles onward. 


276 PARDNERS 

Though the weather was clear, he grew 
numbed and careless under the strain of his 
fatigue, so that the frost bit hungrily at his 
features. He grew gaunt, and his feet swelled 
from the snow-shoe thongs till they puffed out 
his loose, sealskin boots, and every step in the 
morning hours brought forth a groan. 

He was tortured by the thought that per- 
haps the Indian had carelessly let go the fire in 
Klusky s cabin. If so, the precious potatoes 
would freeze in a night. Then, if the native re- 
built it, he would arrive only to find a mushy, 
putrifying mass, worse than useless. The un- 
certainty sickened him, and at last, as he sight- 
ed the little hamlet, he paused, bracing his legs 
apart weakly. 

He searched fearfully for traces of smoke 
above Klusky’s cabin. There were none. 
Somehow the lone shack seemed to stare ma- 
lignantly at him, as he staggered up the trail, 
and he heard himself muttering. There were no 
locks in this land, so he entered unbidden. The 
place was empty, though warm from recent 


The Scourge 277 

habitation. With his remaining strength he 
scrambled up a rude ladder to the loft where he 
fumbled in the dark while his heart stopped. 
Then he cried hoarsely and, ripping open the 
box, stuffed them gloatingly into pockets and 
shirt front. He dropped from the platform and 
fled out through the open door, capless and 
mittenless ; out and on toward the village. 

His pace slackened suddenly, for he noted 
with a shock that, like Klusky’s cabin, no 
smoke drifted over the house toward which lie 
ran, and, drawing near, he saw that snow lay 
before the door; clean, white, and untrodden. 
He was too dazed to recall the light fall of the 
night previous, but glared blankly at the idle 
pipe; at the cold and desolate front. 

“Too late!” he murmured brokenly, “loo 
late!” and stumbled to the snow-cushioned 
chopping block. 

He dared not go in. Evidently the camp had 
let George die; had never come near to lift a 
hand. He was afraid of what lay within, afraid 
to face it alone. Yet a dreadful need to know 


PARDNERS 


£78 

pulled him forward. Three times he approached 
the door, retreating each time in panic. At last 
he laid soft hands upon the latch and entered, 
averting his eyes. Even so, and despite the 
darkness inside, he was conscious of it; saw 
from his eye corners the big, still bulk that sat 
wrapped and propped in the chair by the table. 
He sensed it dazedly, inductively, and turned 
to flee, then paused. 

“Ye made it, boy! It’s the twelfth to-day.” 
George’s voice came weakly, and with a great 
cry Captain sprang to him. 

“Bout all in,” the other continued. “Ain’t 
been on my feet for two days. I knowed you’d 
come to-day, though; it’s the twelfth. 

Captain made no reply, for he had knelt, his 
face buried in the big man’s lap, his shoulders 
heaving, while he cried like a little boy* 


THE END 


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